Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her very comprehensive reply and her openness to the debate. I wish to acknowledge the spirit in which the Minister always comes to the Seanad and it is great to have her back here to debate this. The strength of Seanad Committee Stage debates is that they take place in the House. That is very important. I accept, as we all do, that there is an urgency to this Bill in the sense that people have waited so long for it. On the other hand, we have had two years and three months between Second Stage and Committee Stage and the Government amendments are coming in now, one month before the end of the session. There could have been more haste earlier, not to mix metaphors. We acknowledged the need to bring this forward which is why we did not oppose it. Senator Warfield said that we would have been entitled on the Order of Business to say that we did not want to proceed at all with Committee Stage, but we did not do that. We simply said we would like to start Committee Stage because we recognise the importance of bringing the legislation forward but we do not think we should have a five-hour debate with so little time available to be able to consider the amendments and, indeed, to consult with others on the amendments.

As the Minister said, given that we have had two years and three months since Second Stage, time has moved on and our awareness collectively has changed about the nature and the way in which adoptions were carried out in Ireland for far too long, with this culture of secrecy and of shamefulness that shrouded so much of mother and baby homes. We have learned dreadful things about the practices in these homes.

Over that period expectations built up that there would be a greater recognition of the right of identity and information. The difficulties that many have with the Government amendments to the Bill is that they still appear to come to us from a fundamental presumption against an unfettered or unconditional right of access to information. Many of us are now saying that we should turn this around. Let us have a presumption in favour of a culture of openness and information and then work out a process that enables privacy rights to be asserted and protected as against that presumption. The difficulty I and others have with the provisions is that they have reversed it. They are coming from a presumption that there should not be unconditional access.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, said today in response to the proposed amendments, that it welcomed the removal of the obligation on adopted persons to sign an undertaking before seeking information about their identity. Senator Higgins and others have also pointed this out and the Government amendment which seeks to do this is very welcome. However, the ICCL point out that the proposed amendments would establish instead a process of searching for, notifying and giving a right to object to any natural parents of that adopted person, before any information can be disclosed. That is one way that the Government has chosen to protect privacy rights of birth parents who do not want their information disclosed.

There are alternative ways that could be put forward which would come from a presumption in favour of a right to access to information. I have suggested one, which I still have to flesh out, and I will be putting forward amendments to do his, including an amendment to section 1(2), to provide for a process to enable birth parents to assert privacy rights but against a provided for timeframe where there would be, by default, a right of access to information at the end of the six months. It is not so far from what the Minister is proposing but is a less unwieldy method and one that is more trustful of adopted persons. It gives a better balancing to the right of information and identity to say that we are going to make a general appeal to anyone who wishes to assert a privacy right to come to us and make their objection, otherwise we will be disclosing to anyone who comes forward, and there will not be a condition placed on the access to information.

My suggested proposal would have the very practical advantage in that it would not have the consequence that so many stakeholders have identified of the unwieldy and costly procedures which are going to be required of Tusla to go out searching for natural birth parents. The Council of Irish Adoption Agencies say that these amendments are unworkable, given the burden they would place on Tusla. The Minister has acknowledged the cost and resource implications for Tusla. Both the Council of Irish Adoption Agencies and the Irish Association Social Workers have expressed serious concerns about the cumbersome, costly and resource-intensive nature of the processes.

We all acknowledge the need to move forward with information on tracing legislation and the need to ensure, as the Minister said, that statutory basis is given for the procedures and so on. I do not want to prolong this but we are advocating alternative ways of balancing rights that are preferable in 2019 and that recognise, primarily, a right of identity and information.