Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

All of us want to see the fundamental right to identity of adopted persons recognised and given effect in this legislation. That is absolutely the spirit in which I bring forward this amendment, supported by my colleagues.

The Minister indicates this will only apply to a small number of persons but that is precisely the point. It will apply to those adopted persons who seek their birth information and whose birth parent has entered a "no contact" preference, as is their right. In such a case an adopted person who does not participate in this mandatory information session will not have access to the birth information, so it places a condition on access and it is discriminatory against a small number of adopted persons.

I look again to what was said when the Bill had pre-legislative scrutiny. We said then that adopted people whose parent registers a "no contact" preference would under the Government proposal be singled out for differential treatment in a targeted warning about privacy rights. We also said that the mandatory information session was seen by some witnesses as compounding misguided fears about adopted people and perpetuating the injustice they have suffered for years, and that an alternative should be sought.

It is clearly not for us to dispute or undermine a birth parent's right to enter a "no contact" preference but that entry should not then lead to a scenario where those adopted persons are singled out for particular treatment. My amendment seeks to give effect to our alternative safeguard proposal of a registered post letter and to apply it to all adopted persons. It would set out whether the birth parent's desire was to have contact, so it would not be discriminatory, but it would supply the information. It would supply it in a way that could be proven to have been received. For us this is about trust in adopted persons and trusting that an adopted person informed that the birth parent has entered a "no contact" preference will not seek to contact that parent.

The reality is that under the Government's proposal an adopted person in such a case who participates in an information session will receive the information. There is no block on the information and the process does not safeguard the birth parent's privacy to that extent. We are all agreed on that.

As the Minister has said, we have moved on. I proposed a somewhat similar version of this some years ago when working with the Minister's predecessor, former Deputy Katherine Zappone, to try to achieve workable legislation that would finally give effect to adopted persons' identity rights.

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At that point, the Attorney General advised that even that was not possible, and that a statutory declaration would have to be signed by an adopted person, because there was so little trust in adopted persons. The Minister is right in saying we have moved on from that. Our culture of "restrict, do not release" has happily changed. However, section 17 of this Bill remains a last vestige of that outdated culture and lack of trust. I know the Minister has tried to move it on. We tried to move it on on Committee Stage. We believed we had achieved a compromise that would provide a safeguard for respecting privacy rights and a proven mechanism for saying the information was received by the adopted person, without singling out adopted persons whose birth parents had entered a particular no-contact preference. We have all moved on. We believe the registered post option is now the best option, and should be acceptable in our new culture in which we know a lot more about identity rights, in which EU law has moved on, and in which we are better achieving mechanisms for the balancing of rights. It is in that vein I say I still have no response to my question. What if an adopted person in this small category, whose birth parents entered a no-contact preference, does not wish to participate in an information session? They will not have access to birth information, and that is unfair.

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