Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief in an attempt to make space for others. I thank the Minister for joining us in the House. Information and tracing for our adoption services have been long sought by natural mothers who have been wronged and by adopted people who are seeking truth and justice. I commend the Minister's movement on the issue. It is made even more poignant after the revelations in March of the Tuam mother and baby home. I am sure there are many women across the State who hope that the baby taken from them back then was adopted and did not meet a horrific and unjustifiable end in Tuam. It is through the bravery of people such as Catherine Corless that those women received answers. It is, however, worth noting that the women whose children were sent overseas to the likes of Britain and the US cannot retrieve information through the proposed legislation.

Information and tracing are sorely needed not only to provide justice to those who have been wronged, but to infer rights for people in the future. Sinn Féin believes that the Bill before us today falls short and that its implementation will only hinder those seeking information and tracing. While Sinn Féin welcomes the Minister's commitment to explore amendments, we believe the Minister should go back to the drawing board and return with a Bill that contains unfettered access to birth certificates for adopted persons; automatic access for adopted persons to their adoption files; and a tracing service for those who wish to avail of it. Sinn Féin agrees with the Adoption Rights Alliance in its interpretation of the Bill as unnecessarily convoluted and far from the expectations of those it seeks to redress. For example, the lack of automatic access to full, non-redacted records and birth certificates is unnecessary. Birth certificates are often the key for an adopted person in his or her attempt to unlock their past and the measures contained in this Bill stifle what could be worthy efforts.

It is unnecessary and unwarranted to include a statutory declaration provision in section 41 of the Bill. In its 2015 pre-legislative scrutiny report, the Joint Committee on Health and Children said that " ...based on the weight of evidence and the legal submissions received from witnesses, the Committee can find no convincing reason for the inclusion of a Statutory Declaration in the Bill." To include a statutory declaration suggests to adopted people that they cannot be trusted to respect privacy.

The Bill further undermines adopted people by compounding information and contact despite being warned against doing so by adoption rights advocacy groups and in pre-legislative scrutiny. It goes against the advice that some adopted people do not want contact with their natural mothers at all, while others will wait for a period of time after obtaining their birth certificates before attempting to contact their natural mothers or family members. This is because adopted people often choose to absorb the information before progressing any further.

As I said earlier, a noticeable omission of the Bill is the lack of provision on information and tracing for those who were sent, or whose children were sent, overseas for adoption. Considering that some 2,000 babies were exported to the US from the Magdalen laundries, a large cohort that the Bill could have provided for are not included. I can appreciate the sensitive and turbulent nature of making private information available especially between international parties.

Even if it was to give truth to concerned natural mothers, Sinn Féin believes there was scope for attempts to be made in that regard. When one considers information and tracing in the context of adoption, we think of families being reunited and lifelong questions being answered for natural parents and their adopted children. In Ireland, the church-State relationship tore families apart as they did not fit into an acceptable model - as some would have seen it - and we owe greater truth and justice to the birth parents and adopted people who were the fallout of the State's failures. This Bill falls short of their wishes. Sinn Féin, therefore, believes the Bill to be a missed opportunity.