Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The timescale for the legislation is a matter for the committee right now. It is giving the legislation the detailed scrutiny that it needs. As soon as the committee has completed that and sent its report to me, it has my absolute commitment that I will work with the Attorney General and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to make amendments and get it to the Oireachtas as quickly as possible. There is unanimity across all parties and Independents that we need to do this as quickly as possible and that remains my intention.

There has been speculation about redress in recent weeks. I contacted survivors last week and informed them that I will bring the redress proposals to Cabinet in early October. As soon as they are approved by Cabinet, I will inform survivors.

I will deal with counselling in the context of this Bill. The final draft will provide for counselling for mothers, parents and adopted people seeking to use the processes. We will ensure that counselling is there for those who want it. Not everybody wants or requires counselling but it will be available to those who want it.

On wider supports, when the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and certain related matters was published in January, counselling was provided through the national counselling service. A specific stream of counselling, which is accessible to survivors of mother and baby institutions, continues to be accessible. We got an update from it. It is fully funded. Some 158 individuals have sought access to that counselling since the publication of the report. About 80 sought access in January of last year and it has decreased in successive months. That counselling is in place and it is free to use for survivors of these institutions. The details of accessing it are available on my Department's website. I can maybe circulate that to Deputies. They might find it useful to survivors who are coming to them.

The Deputy led with the issue of people being unable to use Article 15 because they are not the data subject. This is another significant complication created by the issue of illegal birth registration, where incorrect details were inserted on people's birth certificates. This legislation seeks to address that. It is clear that people who we have confirmed were subject to an illegal birth registration and people who have reasonable grounds to suspect that they were subject to an illegal birth registration will be able to use the processes in this legislation to get access to their information, to go on the contact preference register and to use the tracing service. Those who are subject to illegal birth registrations can use the process as set out in section 7 of the legislation to correct and protect their legal identity.