Ms Alice McEvoy:

I am grateful for the invitation to speak to the committee as a mother who was forced to give up a child for adoption. I am here as a natural mother and part of a group called Solace for Mothers. I am also a member of the Collaborative Forum and the steering group project on language and terminology representing mothers along with other members of the Collaborative Forum. While we fully support the right of adopted adults to know their origins and identity, which we believe is their human right, we have concerns about the proposed adoption information Bill 2021 in its current draft.

The language with regard to mothers must be changed as we find the term "birth mother" offensive as it reduces mothers to the role of incubators. We also object to other terms such as "given up". We were forced to give up our children for adoption.

I will turn to birth parents’ privacy rights. We are particularly concerned with regard to any medical information on our files which may be given to adopted people and their relatives. Every citizen's medical files are covered by the general data protection regulation, GDPR. I am also concerned by our medical files being treated as historical medical information and not our current medical information. Is there a difference? It appears that our historical medical information held by State agencies, for example, Tusla, should be handed over to our adopted children but not our current medical files, which are regarded as private. We are also concerned about the Bill's contention that it is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest that the applicant be provided with this information. Our medical information should be given out only with our consent, which many of us have already given.

Head 13 concerns requests for information from agencies and authorities. Our concern in this regard is about relatives of natural parents and adoptive relatives. In some cases, mothers have not informed their families of the existence of their adopted child. Can relatives of natural parents and adoptive relatives be contacted by State agencies having secured their names, addresses, etc., from other agencies without the natural parents’ consent?

Page 34 of the Bill, at Part 5, refers to a contact preference register and states that a significant minority of birth mothers gave up more than one child for adoption and may have different preferences as regards each child. This statement is deeply offensive and derogatory to us as natural mothers in terms of the language used. It is judgmental and its relevancy is questionable at best.

I thank the committee for listening to our concerns and I and my colleague, Ms McDermott, will try to answer any questions as best we can.