Mr. Cormac Quinlan:

At the moment, our service provides support, guidance and advice. Our social work team is skilled and expert in that. Counselling is a more specific skill set and we would have to expand the service to include that. In the provisions, the availability of counselling, certainly for birth parents, is following their no-contact preference. It is important that, as part of the public awareness campaign, we have access to counselling for birth parents. As early as possible would be ideal to allow birth parents to consider their choice and make a more informed choice following counselling.

During the work on illegal birth registrations done by Ms Mugan's team for the scoping report that was published some time ago, we dealt with some 150 people and the team set up a very specific support service, including counselling with Barnardos. Tusla funded the counselling but it was provided from other expertise within the State. All the feedback shows that it was a very good option. Something like that could be expanded across the country to provide it for everyone who identifies a need for it.