Ms Rhoda Mac Manus:

The Senator is correct in what she says about missing a step. As we said in our opening statement, this Bill has been constructed as if we never want or need information or contact with our children, and that is so wrong. We have been fighting for this for many decades. I will make a plea. We made a submission as well, not just an opening statement. The submission the committee has, which I hope the members have read, is very detailed. We have presented it twice before, unamended and with exactly the same words. We have been saying the same thing to the same civil servants for decades, and none of that has ever made its way into any legislation. We do not know the reason for that. We do not know why there seems to be some type of constructed wall against us as mothers and fathers. We have a father on our committee as well whose child was adopted. He is happily reunited with her. We do not understand why we have not been listened to. We hope this is a new generation of Deputies and Senators who will have open minds about this, but so far it is like we have been written out of history.

In the opening to our submission, we provided a series of quotations which I accessed in the National Archives. It provides a walk through history and the changing attitudes towards adoption over the years. Members will see that there is even a quote from a previous Minister for Justice, the late Mr. Paddy Cooney, who championed adoption as being better for the illegitimate baby than to be cared for by the baby's mother. That was a Minister for Justice addressing the adoption social workers conference. One can see the type of mindset we were working against and possibly the reason that people want to keep us silenced and want to keep the files closed.