Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being here. I am very grateful for what Fianna Fáil and Senator Leyden have said, that the Seanad is a fine place to try to work this out. We have the time and the legal knowledge and we have a different kind of energy, which could help to find the solution to this. Having been a Senator, the Minister knows that. It is not a good thing for us to simply let it be worked out in the Dáil. It would be very good for us to try to find a way forward with this very delicate and human Bill that is to the satisfaction of everybody. I know the Minister is a great believer in argument and she will accept this completely on those terms but I find the Bill fundamentally flawed and I cannot and will not back it in its current form.

The first flaw we must get over is that this Bill must not confuse information with tracing. That is a major flaw. It confuses the rights to identity, that is, giving adoptees their information, with their desire to meet or not to meet their biological parents. Most research shows that adoptees are looking for information, not to knock on the doors of their natural parents. Somewhere in the Bill, outside of what is written, is an atmosphere of demonisation of adoptees, as if they are out to cause harm or harm will somehow be caused. I know the Minister does not mean that but it is there somewhere. It is as if adoptees mean to somehow disrupt the lives of their birth mothers, fathers or siblings. This is untrue, it is very dangerous and it is a discriminatory belief.

The first report I have the privilege to mention to the Minister is that of the collaborative forum of former residents of mother and baby homes. It states that the Bill, in common with all of its predecessors, conflates the right to personal information with the right to trace, which applicants have never claimed existed nor have they ever asked for such a right to be created. Despite this, we are bringing it about as if they did. The report goes on to stress that the applicants have merely sought their own identities and information, which are rights enjoyed and guaranteed to all citizens but denied to them due to the circumstances of their birth. The report reiterates that rights to identity information are a fundamental right.

It may interest the Minister to know that in the 1990s, many organisations provided a means of finding birth parents or adopted children. This started in 1985. People have been using many of these organisations and processes for years. There have been no lawsuits and no harm has come about as a result.

The second point I would like to make is very relevant today. I was delighted to hear the Minister say she would contact the stakeholders throughout the world of adoption, which is a big world.I am sorry that did not happen before because we might not now be in this impasse. I include Fianna Fáil in that reflection. I know it has been very difficult for adoptees. They were very gracious to those of us who met them recently, as was their office. Generally speaking, however, there could have been a little more contact. That is just my opinion.

My third point concerns Tusla. As the sole agency, it is not equipped to carry out what the Bill suggests it should carry out. The Minister knows this and referred to it in her speech. Tusla is unregulated under the Adoption Act 2010. Some 15,000 people, including birth parents and adoptees, are already on a contact register maintained by the Adoption Authority of Ireland. I refer to the national adoption contact preference register, NACPR. It is my belief and that of the collaborative forum of former residents of mother and baby homes that the NACPR should be relaunched on a statutory footing and rebadged to allow registrations for all. Tusla should be ruled out from managing that database. That is a radical thing to say. I do not mean that in a personal way but in respect of the Department. I note the Minister's answer to Deputy Micheál Martin today regarding the provision of extra money to Tusla. There is a serious problem regarding how Tusla is going to have the resources and money required to carry out this task. I note the Minister's answer and that on the time limits as well.

All current information that the Adoption Authority of Ireland holds on the 15,000 people who are already registered will be lost or laid dormant as people are forced to reregister. Those on the current register, both natural mothers and adoptees, put their names on that list in good faith and gave that decision the consideration required. It was not a decision they came to lightly. Under this Bill, it is now being suggested that they start all over again. If the current NACPR were to be placed on a statutory basis, active tracing and provision of information to those requests would begin immediately. Tusla has undermined the civil registration system. It has done that while lacking the talent, experience and requisite expansive and expensive training to do that task itself. Tusla is not regulated for adoptive services, yet the Bill suggests that it set up a quasi-legal process to argue the case for and against the release of information. That is flawed, unfair and costly and will cause undue delays.

Tusla does not have the staff, the administration nor the training required. It has neither the gestaltnor the Jungian theory to be able to decide, therapeutically, which information to give out and which to withhold. I understand that social workers, by their very nature, are very well trained, well meaning and do outstanding work. It is an enormous task, however, and one too great to ask. How will social workers be able to fulfil that task without the benefit of substantial resources in the areas of time, space, technology, training, expertise, communication and specialisms? We are really talking about the need for a new agency. I reiterate that Tusla is not regulated for adoption services by the appropriate State regulator. In this case, that is the Adoption Authority of Ireland. Tusla's adoption services would, therefore, be unregulated.

When adoption agencies withered on the vine and bowed out of the adoption process, for very natural reasons, the HSE nominated Tusla as the body to which all files should revert. Tusla is now the second biggest holder of adoption records, numbering 120,000. This aspect of the Bill cannot have been thought through. It is too huge and profound a task to ask of an agency which is already engaged in so much other incredible and important work with young people. There has been much talk about the whole area of the natural mother's right to privacy. Privacy can be negative or positive. The Minister raised this herself. Why does the natural mother's right to privacy supersede the adoptee's right to privacy or identity? Why is the adoptee vetoed by the mother?

This Bill is forcing natural mothers to know of their adopted child’s efforts to seek information, whether they wish to know or not. If adoptees were trusted by the State to be able to source their records for their own personal use or reason, then the natural mothers would never need to know of this development. That would allow for lives to go on without the initiation of any tracing or reunion. Whether tracing or reunions happen are completely separate issues. The process I have suggested would protect the privacy of the natural mother and the adopted child. It is possible to do that, but certainly not in this Bill as it is now. The Minister has acknowledged that. The greatest abuse of the right to privacy is brought about by the interference of the State. No one in this country needs to be reminded of what happens to women and children when the State interferes.

I have read hundreds of emails from representative bodies such as the Adoption Rights Alliance, the Adoption Authority of Ireland, Aitheantas-Adoptee Identity Rights, human rights lawyers, legislatures, sociologists, mothers and adoptees. Two phrases keep coming to mind that encompass the despair of this whole world. Those are the "architecture of containment" and "living bereavement". It is sometimes not easy to understand what people mean when they say they do not know who they are. We talk about transcendence and we make statements concerning being able to walk in the shoes of other people or understanding the feelings of others. That is not the case. We really do not know how people are and how they feel when they do not know who they are and cannot find out. The absolute isolation of that is mind-boggling. All of these barriers are placed, for the best reasons in the world, in front of people when they try to do something about that situation.

We need to keep that in our minds. I suggest that the Minister consider three points. Information should be given out by independent archivists to every person requesting it. Applicants would get their personal data after an information session where they would be informed of how the NACPR works, as well as the responsibilities and opportunities it places on everyone. Family tracing would be an optional service after that and it would be a service well resourced and staffed with trained, expert social workers. That is why I suggest-----