Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My heart sank when I saw how many of the most important recommendations of the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth were not taken into account when revising this Bill. An opportunity was there to address the injustices of the past that have been ignored or suppressed over the decades. We have seen this with the attitude that was shown to the survivors of the mother and baby homes like Sean Ross Abbey over the years but, despite the horrors they experienced through no fault of their own, they have been persistently failed through half-hearted and incomplete measures.

While this Bill has key associations with that shameful part of our history, what we are talking about today is an issue that affects all people adopted in this country and their right to access their own personal information in the same way as everybody else. Years of extremely flawed schemes and Bills that put limitations on the ability of adopted people to access crucial information about themselves led to one thing, namely, discrimination. Adopted people were discriminated against through the application of different requirements to them versus everyone else. Then, this Bill was put forward but different standards and requirements still applied. The Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth made 83 key recommendations on these outstanding issues but the Bill does not reflect that. It still does not provide unrestricted access to birth certificates, adoption files or early-life information files, regardless of how the Minister may present it. I understand that balancing the identity rights of applicants and the privacy rights of birth or natural parents is difficult, but this was discussed by the committee and witnesses at great length and it was still the overall view that more could be done to ensure unfettered access to birth records, adoptive files or any records relating to them. This Bill does not go anywhere near the spirit of the committee's recommendations.

The requirement for mandatory information sessions remains, just in a slightly different form. All Oireachtas Members who are not adopted need to ask themselves whether they have to do it. When it comes to the demands being made of adopted people in this Bill, the answer will be “No”, which confirms that this Bill imposes different requirements on people based on whether or not they are adopted. That is unacceptable. The fact that only parts of files will be made available rather than whole files is another case in point. Family medical information will not be released to an adopted person’s family without the intervention of a GP. These are just some of the issues that remain unaddressed despite the recommendations of the committee, which spent hours and hours hearing from those whom this Bill concerns. Let us not forget the supreme efforts that were made by adoptees, mothers, survivors and their families and advocates through their selflessness.

We will be seeking to make a number of amendments to address these shortcomings. I strongly urge the Aire not to repeat the mistakes that were made previously and to do the right thing by all adoptees. I call on him to disregard what the Taoiseach said publicly recently and to revisit the redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes.

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