Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 26:

In page 14, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following: “(j) any person or organisation involved in facilitating adoptions, or family separation;”.

Amendments Nos. 26 to 28, inclusive, all refer to expanding the definition of "secondary information source". Currently, there is a list of various Departments, registered adoption societies and other accredited bodies included and there is provision for the Minister to prescribe separate persons, but I believe there are wider categories that should be considered.

Amendment No. 26 suggests, "any person or organisation involved in facilitating adoptions, or family separation" should be defined and should be considered as a secondary information source. The reason it is better to do that in the legislation rather than by prescribing is that it would be potentially over-onerous for the Minister to be expected to prescribe under section 43(2) every time and in every instance of where there are persons who have played a role in facilitating adoptions or family separation. We know, for example, that there were persons who were not in a formal role with a registered adoption society but who effectively acted as brokers in respect of incorrect or illegal adoptions and, indeed, there were those who facilitated the separation of families. The fact of those actions should be sufficient to be considered a relevant information source, rather than simply the fact that one has been designated as such. The actions themselves make the person relevant in terms of the information the person may hold.

Amendment No. 27 is very important. Relevant religious orders should be considered as secondary information sources. At present, it is only registered adoption societies or accredited bodies, but many religious orders played a key role. It is the case that while one branch of a religious order may have been in a particular role in running an institution, the religious order as a whole may hold very important information including, potentially, financial information that is relevant. In that context, relevant religious orders or religious orders that have been in any way involved in the processes of adoption, regardless of whether they are registered adoption societies or accredited bodies, should be included.

Amendment No. 28 is also quite important. It proposes "relevant psychiatric institutions" to be included in the definition of "secondary information source". In some cases, children who ended up in these institutions had mothers who were incarcerated in psychiatric institutions. We know many cases of this where women, especially those women who may have strongly resisted or fought back against certain processes that were under way in institutions, faced a threat in respect of psychiatric institutions. It was one of the parts in the very large architecture of control that the State exercised against women.

One of the worst stories I have heard is of a woman, who is now living in the UK and who came back here and spoke to me about it, discovering that her mother had been attributed as having post-natal depression and had been put into an institution - I think it was Grangegorman - and had stayed there for the rest of her life. Her daughter was not even aware that her mother was alive but, in fact, that mother had been incarcerated in a psychiatric institution ever since that woman's birth. The woman had come to talk about the memorials. It is an example of where we cannot have sections of an architecture of control where the information trail would dry up in terms of secondary information sources. That is why relevant psychiatric institutions should be identified as relevant secondary information sources for the purposes of the legislation.