Ms Joan McDermott:

I will come in with regard to head 30 of the proposed Bill, that is, Entitlement of Registrar General to Request and Receive Information. In the explanatory note, the provisions in the head are to "ensure that information on an incorrect birth can be sought and shared with the General Register Office ... for the purpose of enabling correction of an entry in the Birth Register".

Recently, I was waiting in anticipation for files under a subject access request and thought that I would sit down for the afternoon and read right through them. Unfortunately, I was informed that the files for my era in Bessborough were probably burnt and that there were no files. To my shock, however, I had in that envelope three registered papers relating to my son's adoption. All contained my signature but none of these signatures were pertaining to me.

As I just quoted, head 30 of the Bill states, "for the purpose of enabling correction of an entry in the Birth Register". Nowhere in the Bill could I find any reference regarding the correction of registrations on the adoption register. I would like some answers on that, please. I have three documents which led my son to think that he was legally adopted when he was not, and an incorrect birth certificate, of which he is now in possession since he met me in 2015. He obviously had no access to his birth certificate but when he did receive information from the State agency, the birth information - the dates of birth - were incorrect. It is one hell of a mess.

My question is a very pertinent one. He said to me very recently that he kind of wonders where he fits in. He asked, "Am I stateless?" Could someone expand on that a bit? He was born in this jurisdiction. He has an incorrect date of birth. As happened to many people in the 1960s, he has an inappropriate adoption. The criterion in the late 1960s was that if a person was of good standing in his or her community, he or she could go to Bessborough and say, "I want one". He or she went down along the row of cots and said, "I will have that one" like one would pick apples in the supermarket. It is not a funny analogy but that really happened.