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

The Minister said that as of last Monday, 7,526 applications for information have been received by Tusla and the Adoption Authority of Ireland, as well as 3,489 applications made for tracing services. However, only 2,948 requests have been completed. The Minister said that like it was a good thing but that is kind of the problem because of the requests yet to be processed, does he know how many of them are waiting for longer than the statutory time period of one month, extendable to only three months under the Act? Does the Minister acknowledge that the delays are routinely breaching the Act? Most importantly, there are applicants who through their own work have accessed more information than this legislation provides them with. I refer to those who for maybe years or decades have gone about finding their own information through all these lengthy processes. This legislation came out and they requested their information but they got less than what they managed to find themselves. That is clear evidence that people are not getting all their information. What does that say about how the legislation is working and what it set out to achieve in the first place?

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