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

I welcome the Deputy to the committee. I will try to address her points. In terms of the use of the phrase "birth parent", I am open to looking at how we can address that and use language to correctly and appropriately represent mothers and fathers through the Bill. I am open to anything there.

We can definitely look at the issue raised by the Deputy in respect of the timeframe.

The provisions on illegal birth registration are extremely important and represent a very significant process to allow those subject to illegal birth registration to confirm their legal status. If there are particular issues that the Deputy wishes to flag up, we are happy to engage as we go through this process.

On the issue of the information meeting, the central point is that this legislation has to be seen to have considered the privacy rights of the parent. The Deputy is absolutely right that the Irish approach has for far too long elevated the privacy rights over the identity rights. We are flipping that in this legislation. We are putting the identity rights as central and guaranteeing that absolute right in every circumstance. As I did, the Deputy listed the three prongs of the protection of the right to privacy. The counselling element is not a mandatory element in that people do not have to take up the offer of counselling if they do not want to. The temporal element does apply to everyone, in that everyone has the right of access after the age of 16.

On the information meeting element and having it apply to everyone or changing it to involve just the conveying of information, a significant minority of parents or mothers may be affected. The concern relates to cases where people come forward to indicate a clear preference for no contact and, in doing so, indicate that they want some vindication of their privacy rights. Conveying that fact directly to someone, whether face to face or, as I propose, via a virtual meeting, ensures that if this legislation is challenged on the basis that it does not fully acknowledge a person's privacy rights, the State can strongly defend the legislation by demonstrating that a process was in place whereby the preference was conveyed directly rather than in writing, which might not be as strong.