Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The requirement in the Adoption Act 2010 that agencies providing information and tracing services would gain accreditation resulted in a number of religious orders deciding not to apply for accreditation and transferring records from their mother and baby homes and adoption societies to the Child and Family Agency. For example, in the case of the Sacred Heart Adoption Society, 25,000 records have been transferred to the agency’s regional adoption service in Cork. This means 25,000 files that were previously held by a private adoption agency are now with the Child and Family Agency. Work has taken place on organising the storage of these files, which is a massive job.

In the legislation I intend to bring forward, I will make it a statutory requirement that all records held by private individuals or agencies are made available to a central authority. That will mean any records we can access will be known about, can be archived and made more accessible.

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