Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank both the witnesses. Their opening statements were very helpful, succinct and concise.

They have really brought clarity to bear on the provisions in the scheme before us. It was refreshing to listen to them.

I was involved as a Senator in the previous Oireachtas in seeking to achieve a workable framework to allow adopted people to access their information. We kept coming up against the same barrier our guests have identified as underlying this scheme, that is, the insistence that information rights would have to be balanced against the privacy rights of natural or birth parents, particularly natural or birth mothers. There was a suggestion that the balancing could only be achieved through the introduction of a somewhat cumbersome process. Mr. McGarr pointed out the criminal penalties at one point. The most recent iteration of the process in this scheme is some improvement but it still starts from the place both our guests have identified, that is, that it is a balancing act. The right to information is not seen as an unfettered right but as something that must be balanced and, in many cases, is overridden by the right to privacy, which is being used against those who are seeking this information. The right to privacy is not something that many birth and natural mothers have necessarily asserted. I thank our guests for their clarity.

I will ask two specific questions. What do our guests have to say about an issue we have constantly come up against, namely, that we cannot legislate for access to information in an unfettered away, apparently according to advice from different Attorneys General because we must balance privacy rights? What do our guests have to say on that matter? That obstacle has been put in our way and, more importantly, in the way of adopted people for far too long.

Given the clarity of the approach our guests are suggesting, how should we, as a committee, proceed in our recommendations at this pre-legislative scrutiny stage? Should we say that there is no requirement - in fact, it is in breach of the general data protection regulation - for us to be erecting these cumbersome bureaucratic obstacles, as I have described them? Should we sweep that away and start with a clean slate in terms of the right to information? I would love to hear our guests' views and I thank them again.