Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, it is worth noting the group of people this Bill refers to have endured an especially nasty and dehumanising form of abuse from the State that continues to a certain extent to this day. I refer to forced family separation along with practices of illegal adoption, the falsification of records and the imposition of secrecy on women and children. The State, as well as religious organisations and others, denied individuals their identity. It assaulted their sense of belonging and personhood from the day they were born. Subsequently, it did everything possible to oppose their access to information, including approaches that dismissed rights, infantilised survivors and further traumatised them. The parents, especially and most often the mothers, were equally impacted on by this regime.

Disgracefully, this impulse from the State is still present to a certain extent. This legislation contains elements of it. A Bill has been deemed necessary despite the existing right to access one's personal information. It should also be noted that while these issues relate to mother and baby homes, there are many people affected who did not go through that system. Aitheantas, the adoptee identity rights advocacy group, has highlighted that many of the people they represent could not participate in the mother and baby homes commission, and were not included in the Taoiseach’s apology last year. That fact needs to be rectified as part of this process. We need to officially and fully acknowledge the wrongs intentionally perpetrated against these adopted people and their families by the State.

While any improvement on the State’s refusal to provide people with their birth and early life information is welcome, this Bill, despite months of engagement and recommendations from advocacy groups, falls short of what is required and fails survivors in many aspects. It is deeply insulting and wrong that the rights of this group of people are not being fully vindicated when we have this opportunity. The pre-legislative scrutiny was extensive and detailed with almost 40 witnesses appearing before the committee, including survivors groups, advocates, and human rights experts, as well as the written submissions being received. We carefully reviewed all submissions with the assistance of the secretariat for the children's committee, which did incredible work, and the chairing of Deputy Funchion. Our report synthesised all of those engagements into 83 recommendations. Disgracefully, many of them seem to have been disregarded. I am left wondering what the point of the pre-legislative scrutiny was.

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