Ms Lisa Kiernan:

On Senator McGreehan's first question regarding DNA, many of our group have only discovered that they are not who they thought they were. We all have seen the advertisements on television, social media and radio for the likes of Ancestry and My Heritage. People are buying family members DNA tests as Christmas presents, birthday presents and Mother's Day presents. You innocently spit into a tube, you think you will find your whole family tree and then you suddenly discover there is not a single person on the family tree that you have ever heard of, let alone know. It is imperative, as far as we are concerned, that there is some kind of database and that DNA is acknowledged to be proof of who you are. We can use it in the criminal law system. We can use it when mother and fathers are arguing over who the parent of the child is. We can use it for all those, but why cannot we use it to know who we are? From that point of view, DNA has to be involved in this Bill. There is no way around it. There is no other answer.

It has to be acknowledged that DNA services are not affordable for many people. My understanding is that they costs approximately €500 per test. In order to test your DNA against somebody else's, you need at least two people. That is not on. It has to be a part of the final Bill. We would beg for that one to be part of it.

The second question the Senator asked was about the 441 versus the 151. We were shocked when, at the committee's meeting last month, the Minister described the illegal birth registrants as a very small group of 441. We have been informed that it has always been 151. It seems that there has been a giant leap in the month of September, but nobody alerted us to that fact. Regardless of whether it was an error or a typo in the Minister's speech to the committee, it is a huge leap. We would like to know where that number is coming from. When we look at our numbers between all three different groups, we are looking at close to 180,000. When you add all the others group together that are being considered for different parts of this Bill, such as the survivors of the Magdalen laundries and the mother and baby homes, the number of those who actually have adoption orders does not even add up to 178,000. We are a huge group. We are not insignificant. We have to be listened to.

I really hope we are heard. There is a line at the end of the book Banished Babieswhich reads, "Deny until they die." There are many who are getting on in life. Many of the mothers in our group - I use the word "mothers" quite easily, actually - such as my grandmother have passed, unfortunately. We are running out of time and we need to give these women some kind of justice.