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

Not that I know of - there may be a case for doing that in a forward-looking way if we use commissions of investigation again for issues as sensitive as this. Another commission of investigation - the Farrelly commission - is ongoing.

Regarding the point about the High Court case, a case was taken by a number of survivors and former residents seeking that certain paragraphs in the commission's report be struck down. An agreement was reached between the State and those survivors and that agreement, which was ratified by the court, was that a statement be appended to the commission's report, be present wherever the commission's report is officially displayed and outline the fact that survivors should have been consulted in terms of the process and should have received the final draft of the report to allow them to comment and that subsequently they do not agree with certain findings. It lists various paragraphs of the commission's report. That is a really important step because we all know that from the day the commission's report came out, there was very significant anger about some of the conclusions. It is really important that this anger and dissatisfaction is now reflected in the official record. That is an official statement that lies beside the commission's report.

In terms of the information and tracing legislation, the key route there is an online route but it can also be accessed via phone and through a letter as well. The website address is www.birthinfo.ie. The website is quite easy to use. You pick which category you belong to, for example, are you a mother, an adopted person, somebody who was subject to boarding out or illegal birth registration or somebody with questions about your origins. You then draw down that menu and tick whether you want to register in the contact preference register and whether you want to receive information. It is an easy-to-use site. I know there was one issue yesterday about people registering from the US. There was an issue with US phone numbers. My understanding is that this has been resolved. There was very significant drawdown on the first day with almost 2,000 people seeking information. It is good to see it being taken up and used.