Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for, and appreciate, his comprehensive response to my question. I will come back to the second part of my question on the tracing issue. If the information meeting was supplied to everybody, thereby removing the element of it being a moot point going into the information meeting if one knows that he or she will be told it is a no-contact preference, it would also remove the potential for paternalistic allegations to be made by the recipients of their information that they are being singled out as having to be spoken to about privacy, while still observing the Constitution. That is just a suggestion and I do not expect the Minister to comment on that.

With regard to tracing, the definition of "relevant persons" clearly refers to the person who is the subject of the birth certificate and the surrounding information, as the person who will be entitlement to apply for the information. Not providing mothers or siblings with the same right of access or entitlement, and by them being referred to only as tracing-only solutions, creates a difficulty where the information is incorrect. If I were a mother who gets to claim my file, within which I would get a sense of whether there have been unlawful or deliberately misleading recording of information, I would get an opportunity to identify that. I am concerned that there could be a gap within the tracing where the opportunity to identify that is not provided, if anyone other than the relevant person does not have access or if the definition of a relevant person is too narrow. What consideration has the Minister given to that aspect of tracing where there is inaccurate data to rely on?