Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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206. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the degree to which her Department monitors possible illegal adoptions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38266/18]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Adoption Authority of Ireland is the independent regulatory body over adoption in Ireland, under the Adoption Act 2010.

As the Deputy will be aware, I announced in May of this year that clear evidence of illegal registration had been uncovered in records from St. Patrick's Guild former adoption agency. There have been suspicions about illegal birth registrations for a number of years, but there has never been any hard evidence. Record-keeping was limited and not all relevant records are in State ownership. The issue with the SPG files came to light when Tusla social workers were scanning the files, and came across a marker saying ‘Adoption from Birth’.

Adoption has been regulated since the commencement of the 1952 Adoption Act. In the cases uncovered, individuals appear to have circumvented any safeguards in place and to have registered false information in relation to births, which was an offense.

Following the discovery of clear evidence of illegal registration in the St. Patrick's Guild records, I directed that an analysis of adoption records be carried out to establish whether there is sufficient reliable evidence of the practice of illegal registration that can be extracted from the records of adoption agencies.

There are an estimated 150,000 adoption records in existence and, of these, approximately 100,000 are currently in the custody of the State, i.e. in the possession of either Tusla or the Adoption Authority of Ireland. The review is focused on those records in the custody of the State and a targeted sampling exercise in being carried out in the first instance owing to the volume of records involved. This targeted review will help to establish the extent of usable information that can be found in these historical records. The review will provide information to assist me in identifying more fully the scale of illegal birth registrations and in identifying any necessary next steps.