Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I support the amendments. We are revisiting, yet again, an issue we discussed on Committee Stage. In the context of the amendment, greater detail was needed to establish the type of structure we need. The difficulty I had in drafting it was that it was going to be ruled out of order as imposing an expense on the Exchequer. I hoped that after Committee Stage - I suppose it was a vague hope - the Minister would come back with amendments on this issue. Really, the speakers who have spoken already have well put the position. This is something which has been promised for years. The Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, went through a consultative process on this as Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children. The consultation seems to have lead us all up a cul-de-sac with no result.

I do not take seriously the Minister of State's promise that we will see legislation during the lifetime of this Government on this issue. There has been a decade now of promises. There is a whole backlog of legislation on the children's brief. The Minister of State does not have a hope in hell of producing legislation this side of next Christmas on the vetting issue to allow for the use of soft information. I hope I am proved wrong; I would be delighted to be proved wrong. However, the Joint Committee recommended that be published by December 2008 and here we are in June 21010 and we do not have it.

We were to have legislation to give statutory effect to the child protection guidelines. The Minister promised we will see that Bill before the end of this year. The reality is there is no chance of legislation on this issue. What I do not understand, and I am sorry to repeat a constant critique of this Bill, is why major issues that have been the subject of substantial reforming recommendations over the years and pleas from the Adoption Board that they be addressed are being entirely ignored in a Bill which is consolidating legislation and, in some places, retaining in force outdated, anachronistic provisions which go back to 1952.

I want to put something on the Dáil record because I think it is informative. I suppose the group of experts at the coalface, who are neither adopters nor adoptees, dealing with adoption all of the time is the Adoption Board. Its annual report addresses this issue. Mr. John Collins is the chief executive officer. In page 12 of the report it states:

Finally, I wish to turn to the area of adoption information and tracing, an important service for users. The levels of demand here should serve to remind us that a modern and enlightened adoption service does not end with completion of a legal adoption process. It is an intrinsic and immutable characteristic of adoption that many adopted people, on reaching adulthood, will enquire into their origins and will seek to trace their natural parents and other relatives, who may well be seeking to trace them. At the end of 2008, nearly 8,000 people had registered on the National Adoption Contact Preference Register (NACPR). New applicants continue to present each year in the hope of being matched to a relative by the Register, established in 2005.

Then he says, which is particularly important, that:

Generally, the absence of a modern legislative basis for the national information and tracing service is an obstacle to the further development of the service.

This is a statutory body, established by the Government to make adoption orders and deal with our adoption service within the limits of existing legislation who said, not just in 2008, but in earlier years as well that there was a necessity for a statutory framework to facilitate adopted persons and the biological parents of adopted persons to trace each other.

Why would a Government produce an Adoption Bill that has within it 176 sections and entirely ignore that issue and re-enact legislation which is grossly inadequate and goes back to 1952? I just do not understand why; I do not take seriously the constant promises of reform. This is not rocket science. This is an area which has been addressed right across the world and in our neighbouring countries.

I hope people will not accuse me of being indulgent if I quote from the fourth edition of Shatter's Family Law published too long ago now, 11 years ago. It deals with this issue and referred to a particular thing. It states that:

In Scotland, since the introduction of adoption in 1930 adopted persons, upon attaining 17 years of age, have had the right to obtain a copy of their original birth records. In England and Wales, adopted persons, upon attaining 18 years, had a similar right since November 1976, but those adopted before the enactment of the Children Act 1975 must first undergo counselling but they still have the right of access. In Northern Ireland, the Adoption (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 extended to Northern Ireland the same rights to adult adoptees that they have in England and Wales except those adopted prior to the 18 December 1987 are first required to undergo counselling before they get access to birth records.

This is not rocket science. This has been addressed in all our neighbouring jurisdictions. Someone who was adopted across the Border in Northern Ireland has substantially greater rights than one has in this State.

I do not believe we comply with Article 8 of the Convention which we should comply with. I find it beyond comprehension that this issue is not being addressed. Other Deputies have referred to all of the reasons it should be addressed. It is not just the issue of tracing origins or facilitating people making contact with each other. There is the whole issue of preserving records, an issue which should have been better dealt with in this legislation. There is the whole issue of getting health histories. There is a broad range of issues that this Bill utterly fails to address that it should have addressed. There is no excuse for it.

Quite simply, for whatever reason, this Government and its predecessor decided that this was an issue which was too hot to handle. They feared controversy and difficulty. I accept there are two different groups of people involved in this and we have to be realistic. There are biological parents, primarily mothers, to whom promises of privacy were made in a different era. There are adopted people who want to know about their origins. We know much more today about the importance of people knowing their origins, accessing medical information and knowing the implications of that for them for the future but the State cannot stand on the sidelines and be paralysed and do nothing.

What is even more extraordinary is that, whatever the difficulties of dealing with it historically, the legislation does not even deal with it prospectively. This is a amendment that we will come to that I have tabled on behalf of Fine Gael. Why does the legislation not expressly contain a provision which says anyone who is adopted in Ireland and who is the subject of a domestic adoption from the date of commencement of this legislation will at the age of 18 have an absolute right of access to his or her birth certificate? That will not create difficulties with the court judgment that was delivered because it means any person who places a child for domestic adoption or consents to the making of an adoption order will be informed that his or her child will gain access to an adoption certificate at the age of 18. There will be no conflict of interest and the privacy issue will not arise. A balancing exercise will not be needed.

In this day and age we have to recognise the vital interest that adopted people have in gaining access to information that could in some cases mean the difference between life and death. Why does the legislation fail to deal adequately with the maintenance by accredited bodies of the health records of both biological parents in so far as that information can be gleaned and is available? Instead of enacting a modern code of adoption, we are consolidating anachronistic legislation based on a value system from a bygone age which utterly failed to address the real problems we have been discussing for more than a decade.

See this speech in context