Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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46. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs her plans her to protect descendants of illegally adopted persons who remain unaware of their adoption status; and if she plans to widen the search for illegal adoptees in order to inform them that their medical records may be inaccurate. [43744/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The term ‘illegal adoption' is used to cover a wide range of situations and actions including the incorrect registration of a birth. Such persons can currently seek information and assistance from the Adoption Authority of Ireland, Tusla and a number of accredited bodies. The Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2016 will for the first time, provide a statutory basis for the provision of information related to both past and future adoptions. It provides for structured and regulated access to information and tracing services. Persons whose births have been incorrectly registered and their birth parents, will be entitled to an information and tracing service in the same manner as an adopted person or a birth parent of an adopted person.

In 2010 the Adoption Authority of Ireland undertook a review of information regarding alleged incorrect birth registrations held by the former Adoption Board. There were approximately 100 National Adoption Contact Preference Register (NACPR) applications which appeared to be related to incorrect birth registrations. The 100 applications were roughly 50:50 pre and post 1953 (adoption legislation was introduced in to Ireland in 1952). In 2013 staff from the Authority visited the General Register Office Research Room to confirm that there were in fact entries in the Register of Births that corresponded to the details given on approximately 120 (the original 100 + 20 received since 2010) of these NACPR applications. The outcome of that was:

- 75 cases of people whose births were registered in the name of their "adopted" parents though no adoption took place and

- 40 cases where persons assumed the identity of their "adopted" parents but there is no record of an adoption or birth registration.

Other than this limited information, any attempts to quantify the numbers of incorrect birth registrations can never be any more than highly speculative given that it is impossible to quantify how many people are currently unaware that they are in fact “incorrectly registered”. Searching for these people would be very difficult if not impossible. Incorrect birth registrations operated in conditions of great secrecy and there were rarely any contemporary written records of these events. The few such records that do still exist are generally papers of a personal nature and are extremely difficult to locate.