Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I do not for one minute believe the Minister of State or his officials are deliberately setting out to be obstructive or heartless. They are people who live much the same lives as the rest of us. This is why I am puzzled about what is left out of the Bill before us.

I cannot understand why we are not dealing with the issues of tracing and medical records. If we want to buy a mobile telephone, we are asked for a medical history. Before we can open a bank account or get a loan from a credit union, we are asked about our history of heart attacks, epilepsy or diabetes and, if our parents are dead, what caused their deaths. Why is this not the case for a child who is adopted? All that is needed is the history and we would not even need to share names. People are driven by the desperate need to know where they came from, their family histories and their genetic predisposition.

The Minister of State should reconsider this section. If he thought about it for any length of time he would realise that the bogey men who scared us in our youth no longer exist. The church no longer plays a dominant role in adoption or in other areas of our lives. I have yet to meet a person, whether adoptive parent or adopted child, who would object to this provision. Will the Minister of State explain why he is rejecting these amendments? Where is the obstacle and who is objecting?

This evening, I spoke to a group of ten women from Cork who have been following the debate on the Bill from the Visitors' Gallery. They thought the arguments were very clear and understandable. One of the women, who was in her 50s, told me separately about the difficulties she faced in getting information on her adoptive parents. She named the adoption agency involved - given that she is from Cork it would not be difficult to identify it - and told me that she fought unsuccessfully for years to retrieve the information she needed. Who does not want that woman to know where she came from or what happened to her parents? I am sure her parents and their family are long past caring at this stage. The adoption agency in question no longer exists. Clearly somebody is making the argument that people should not have information that is critical to their well-being. As Deputy Burton correctly noted, there is no way separate legislation will be introduced before the Government falls.

The last occasion this Bill was debated, I sat down with a group of people in the restaurant to discuss open adoptions, transparency and traceability of medical records. Of the five people sitting at the table, one was adopted and another was married to an adopted man. This is not a small issue or one which affects only a few people. The two people in question saw no difficulty with providing medical records. Why should they not have this information?

We could put safeguards in place. If an adopted child who turns 18 decides to trace his or her parents but the parent does not wish to make contact, protections can be given. However, the option should remain open because someone may have an entirely different view of the world at the age of 18 or 23.

What organisation or individual is preventing this from happening? I do not believe the Minister of State or his officials woke up one morning and decided they would not allow this to happen. Somebody made a cogent argument against this proposal and the Minister of State needs to tell us who it was. It is interesting that seven years will be the age at which a child's opinion about who he or she wants to live with will be respected.

I urge the Minister of State to reconsider. Usually when we ask Ministers to amend legislation, we urge them to be brave but this matter does not even require bravery. It is a question of saying that we need to grow up and act like adults. Adoption is not the secret that it used to be. It is evident in today's Ireland who is adopted because usually foreign adoptions are involved. Domestic adoptions have become very rare. People are open about fertility treatment and adopting. Whose secret is the Minister of State keeping? Who argued against allowing people, even those in their 50s, to know who they are? I ask the Minister of State to reconsider his position on this issue. It is not a case of showing bravery but one of growing up, being adult and allowing people to find out what they need to know without having to go through the awful trauma of constantly being pushed back by the organisations that have control of the information. Those days are long gone.

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