Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

The Deputy refers to issues relating to records created prior to, and post, the introduction of the statutory regime for adoption in Ireland in the Adoption Act 1952. Therefore, for clarity and to provide the Deputy with as much information as I can, I will deal with both questions separately.

Prior to 1952, there was no statutory regime for adoption as we now understand it. Children were placed in foster care under the Children Act 1908 on an informal basis and may also have been placed privately. Fostering and adoption were not legally differentiated, which led to a number of long-term foster care placements becoming what are now called de facto adoptions. Records relating to these cases are likely to be held in a variety of institutions, including the precursors to health boards and a variety of other private, community and religious institutions involved in providing such services at that time.

It is anticipated that records relating to some of these de facto adoptions were retained by those bodies on the introduction of the statutory regimes for both adoption and fostering, which came into effect in 1953. Therefore, it is possible that some of these records are retained by the HSE, former adoption societies or newly accredited bodies under the Adoption Act 2010.

From the information available to me, it is likely that during the period prior to the introduction of the Adoption Act 1952, private arrangements were entered into where the adoption or fostering arrangement was not recorded and, in fact, some such births were falsely registered in which the "adoptive" parents were registered as the biological parents of the child on the birth certificate. In this case, there may be no records of such arrangements and no way of identifying the possible existence of such records.

There are no provisions regarding the retention and preservation of such records in current legislation and the Adoption Authority has no remit in respect of such matters. Notwithstanding the legal and practical difference between such records and those relating to adoptions under the Adoption Acts, I am extremely conscious that these differences are of limited significance to the individuals involved whose concern is with their personal identity. Therefore, it is a matter which I am actively considering in the context of more general provisions in respect of the adoption (information and tracing) legislation which is currently being developed in my Department.

I will deal with the post-1952 situation in a supplementary reply.

See this speech in context