Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

A lot of the conversation has related to amendment No. 14 but I will point out that a very large suite of amendments are combined here. There has been discussion of the questions of prosecutions, a tribunal and an investigation. These are all things that should be considered but, to be clear, it is not simply a question of whether there should be prosecutions for everything. That is a separate conversation. The problem with the Bill as it stands is that access to anything it provides and people's route to any of the entitlements under it is constrained. To give one example, the Bill refers to a person who has "reasonable grounds for suspecting that he or she is, the subject of an incorrect birth registration". There is no provision for access to these things. People must say that they were incorrectly registered. That is their route in. Leaving aside the questions of the term "illegal", parents, who did what and the investigations, it is a matter of people effectively having to describe what happened to them as incorrect registration in order to access information on birth and early life and to get their records released. Again, relevant people include those who were subject to an adoption and those who have reasonable grounds to believe they were subject to an incorrect birth registration.Somebody who believes, or may even know, that they have been subject to an illegal adoption is not really covered. This is because the definition of "incorrect" does not include "illegal", as I said. I suggest it would be awkward for it to do so. The definition in the Bill reads:

"'incorrect birth registration information” means, in relation to a person who is the subject of an incorrect birth registration— (a) the circumstances under which the person became the subject of an incorrect birth registration, and

(b) the name of the person who made arrangements for the incorrect birth registration;