Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry.

I thank Deputy Funchion for introducing this important Bill, which I obviously fully support. It should be acted on immediately. I am very conscious of how important this Bill is, particularly because as an adoptee, I am lucky that I did not have to wade my way through all the barriers and difficulties that many adoptees have faced in trying to secure access to their history, identity and the basic facts of who they are. In my case, my mother actually came and found me although she encountered extraordinary difficulties and closed doors in a process completely mediated by the church, which decided what information one could have. Institutions of the State essentially shut the door and said my mother was not entitled to the information she was seeking but, luckily for me, she managed to wade her way through all the barriers. I cannot imagine what it is like for people who seek out their identity to have such barriers and difficulties put in their way and, even worse, for those who had their identities and histories criminally stolen from them. This is shocking beyond belief. What was revealed in the “RTÉ Investigates” programme about the role of Mr. de Valera’s son in Holles Street was stunning beyond belief. It involved the faking of pregnancies and the taking of children from individuals, in most cases from less well-off sections of society, in order to give them to respectable families. This was done in a criminal way involving the stealing of people's history and identity from them and, potentially, blotting that out forever.

On the sampling review, 260 out of 1,500 in the sample had the markers which suggested the possibility, at least, of illegal adoptions. That is approximately 16% of that small sample of people. We could be talking about 20,000 with those markers. There has to be an investigation and a forensic examination of all of that in order to uncover the criminal actions that were perpetrated and discover, to the best degree possible, the culprits involved and the mechanisms and so on by means of which those actions were perpetrated. Beyond that, as others have stated, it is not just about birth certificates and so on, it is about all the information, everything about people's history and identity, the circumstances surrounding their adoption, etc. People have to have access to all of that. For adoptees and for mothers whose children were taken from them by the twisted morality of church and State, there is no doubt that the legacy of that continues to block people individually and society as a whole from getting to the truth we deserve in terms of that history for the individuals involved and for our society. This is a basic thing.

The fact we need comprehensive legislation, as the Minister indicated, in respect of a range of matters should not be a block to processing this measure, which will at least give people basic access to their birth certificates. Too often, what we are going to do in the future becomes the excuse for not doing what we could do right now.

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