Ms Siobhan Mugan:

On records held outside the agency, in recent months we have noted an increase in persons coming forward offering us records. We are actively working with those groups to secure those records where we legally can. If we are aware of records that are in people's custody, we have reported it to the Adoption Authority of Ireland or to the Department. Many people are coming forward saying they would like to hand records over to us. This is mainly on foot of the data protection legislation whereby they are now subject to processing subject access requests, SARs, and perhaps are not equipped to do that. They are mindful of this and hand it over to us. There have been one or two reports to us that records have been destroyed. We recommend, at all times, that they are reported to An Garda Síochána, and we would report that as well, were we given any information to that effect.

We are aware there is a lot of information with congregations and in the hands of people who may be relatives of GPs or in private nursing homes and who still have those records. While I am sure the AAI can speak to this, I am aware that following the last legislation's enactment, the authority has recently done a detailed scoping exercise to identify where those records are. The Adoption Rights Alliance has done something similar in that regard.