Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and welcome the visitors seated in the Visitors Gallery. I acknowledge and commend the work of Dr. Fergus Ryan who is in the Visitors Gallery because he had a large part to play in the drafting of the Bill. I commend Senators Power, van Turnhout and Healy Eames for their work in preparing the Bill and presenting it to us this evening. They have given us an opportunity to speak on a very important issue. There is real consensus in the House on the need for such legislation. I am delighted that the Government will support the Bill on Second Stage and the fact that it supports the principles behind the legislation.

It is very good to see another Seanad Private Members' Bill supported and accepted in this way by Government. We have had a precedent for this with quite a number of other Bills, which colleagues on both sides are well aware of. With both Opposition and Government Members Bills have been adopted by Government, either adopted fully by Government or parts incorporated into later Government Bills. Either way, the important thing is that we have contributed to the making of legislation in the most direct way which is hugely important.

The right to an identity is an important issue. Many colleagues have spoken eloquently about their personal or family experiences. I do not have that direct experience but as a practitioner, as a practising barrister in the past, I did a lot of work representing survivors of abuse before the Residential Institutions Redress Board. For many of the people whom I represented, and who had spent time in institutions as children, the right to an identity was critical. In many cases the search for information about their birth parents and origins was a hugely important part of their resolution of the issues around abuse and the institutionalisation that they had endured. On a practical level as a legal representative, the difficulty in seeking to obtain information was immense in many cases with all sorts of obstructionism from different bodies - statutory, non-statutory, State and non-State agencies. I also wish to acknowledge the important work done by groups like Barnardos in assisting people and giving support in tracing identity.

This Bill seeks to address not only the core issue of the right to identity and access to personal documentation, such as birth certificates and medical records, but it also addresses the issues around the practical arrangements of access to information. The legislation provides, for example, for the centralisation of adoption records in one place. I know from experience that such an initiative is a hugely important part of the process of seeking information.

There are complex issues on the balancing of rights. For example, the right to privacy when we talk about retrospective adoptions or adoptions in the past. It is much easier to legislate for adoptions that will occur in the future where there will be knowledge of the legislation conditions whereby information will be obtainable. We are dealing with situations, and I have spoken with colleagues and with Senator Power and all of us are aware, where people have never spoken about birth parents or having given a child up for adoption. There are sensitivities that must be respected.

This Bill achieves a careful balancing of the rights at stake. It does not trespass on the privacy of those individuals who wish to have privacy respected and it is not just the parents. As Senator Power has also acknowledged, there may be children whose birth parents have searched for them and who do not wish to have records released. That is a sensitivity that needs to be respected.

The Bill ensures that both adoptees and natural parents may accept or decline for their contact details to be released but there cannot be a veto on the release of the birth certificate which is important. It is also important that the Bill provides for reasonable time limits that are not too short because there may be very difficult issues involved in accessing information, particularly where people do not wish to be contacted. The Bill also makes provision for supports to be provided where information is sought.

The Bill is well constructed and well drafted. I know the Government is working on the heads of a Bill and that many of the issues in this Bill will also be addressed by the Government. There are issues around the management of adoption records, which this Bill addresses, the circumstances for provision of information, issues around both retrospective and prospective adoption, and issues around support services for those who are involved in accessing information and tracing identities. There is a good deal of work which is being done at Government level but today's Bill will assist in that work. I hope that we will see, before too long, the culmination of that work in legislation that is passed into law and goes beyond Second Stage. I hope that this Bill will progress further and I am delighted that we can all support it tonight in the House.