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

The Minister is right on ensuring agency but that is not the purpose or application of this amendment. As I read it, it is in keeping with the spirit of the recommendation in our pre-legislative scrutiny report. The spirit of those recommendations in general was to ensure adopted persons would be provided with the maximum possible information. Recommendation 14 states:

All information is part of an adopted person's history and heritage and must be included in the records provided to them, including: information relevant to treatment, including medical records and evidence of possible abuse[.]

The proposer may correct me but I read the amendment as saying that persons who apply should have made available to them all medical records, regardless of whether they have explicitly requested a particular medical record. That is of value because persons seeking medical records may not know, for example, that they had a vaccine test administered to them as children. Unfortunately, that is often the case and I have met individuals for whom that has been an issue. They may not know that and they may not know to request that record. This amendment seeks to ensure they would get access to particular aspects of medical records they may not have known to apply for.

There may be a better way to draft the amendment to ensure that is its effect. It should not be read as denying agency but as ensuring that a person gets the fullest of information available without needing to apply for specific types of information. I am thinking specifically of vaccine trials.