Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right. Language is very important. It is very important that we do not minimise this in any way in the language we use. It is also important that we be sensitive. In the coming weeks and months people are going to find out information about themselves and the people who they believe are their birth parents and it will be very difficult for everyone. Even the parents who brought up the children, who were involved in and party to the illegal registrations, will find it very difficult because they probably believed at the time that they were doing something right in bringing a child into their home, but we know now that it was not right. We need to share the information and the truth with those fellow citizens of ours who were illegally registered in this way, or illegally adopted, if the Deputy prefers to use that term. I have no difficulty in using it. What will happen now is that there will be an initial scoping and sampling exercise to look at the records of the other adoption societies. If it indicates, as I said in my previous response, that there is evidence of illegal registrations, we will engage in a full analysis of those records. If that is the case, it is potentially a mammoth task and the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, we need to be sensitive in our language and not assume all of these things. Let us act quickly, but let us always act on the basis of facts.

See this speech in context