Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is good to hear the Bill will include retrospective tracing rights. However, more than likely, there will be some information in the private domain that will need to be chased up. Most of us agree that the child's right to an identity must be of greater importance than the mother's right to privacy. The legislation must be introduced without further delay and I am unsure why it has been delayed. The Minister said last year it would be in place by Christmas. We need to bring Ireland in line with international best practice, which has a presumption of openness.

Giving 50,000 plus adopted people access to their birth certificates and early care records is essential in their quest for identity. I note that Susan Lohan of the Adoption Rights Alliance is insisting that the new legislation should take into account all files containing information on adopted people's origins, including, but not limited to, mother and baby home files, private agency files, HSE files, Department of Foreign Affairs files, GP and nursing home files. This is vital data and the State needs to seek information in an active way so it can centralise the data.

I was given a copy of a birth record of a woman who was illegally adopted in the 1950s. The mother's name on the birth record was not the name of the birth mother, but the adopted mother. This is like stealing someone's identity. The grandson of the midwife attending the birth found six birth registry books in an attic, containing the records of hundreds of births. He was decent and handed these records over. Clearly, there is probably data out there that should be collected. Will the Minister organise a proactive search for this sort of data, which supports people's quests for identity? There is information in the private domain the Adoption Authority needs to obtain.

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