Ms Rhoda Mac Manus:

The reason the leaflet is so important is, from our experience, we know how necessary this is. We have sat with quite a number of mothers who received photocopies of the information in the file. Many of them did not realise the significance of some of that information. There was a woman who received her son's birth certificate, but she did not see straight off that his birth was not registered until he was six. She had signed an adoption consent form, or so she thought, and then discovered it was a permission for her son to be boarded out, which was devastating news for her. There needs to be somebody who is prepared to tell the truth about those documents, which these social workers do not tell. They send out photocopies of the information, but they do not even tell you if this indicates an illegal adoption. We have sat with a woman we were able to tell that there were signs of an illegal adoption. The State organisation - I have to be careful here - that sent this to her, did not say in the covering letter that her son had been illegally adopted, but that was a fact. They are not prepared to own up to the illegalities. The reason the information needs to be so detailed is not even we, as mothers, know what might be in the file. We do not know if anyone did write about us or wrote a report. We do not know whether our children wrote in looking for information about us. We know none of these things and unless there is a detailed list of what might be in the file in order that we can ask that question when we go to meet with a social worker and go through the file with her or him, it is pretty useless. I apologise, I may be going off the point.