Speech on Order of Business: Illegal Adoption, Access to Birth Certs, International Women's Day

Gabhaim buíochas, a Chathaoirligh, agus ba mhaith liom freisin a bheith in ann níos mó Gaeilge a labhairt sa díospóireacht le linn na seachtaine atá ann, Seachtain na Gaeilge, ach I will try to improve, which is the mantra for today. Gabhaim buíochas, a Chathaoirligh, for reminding us that it is Seachtain na Gaeilge.

I propose an amendment to the Order of Business to take No. 13, which is Labour's Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2021, before No. 1. We published this Bill in January in light of the report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation and to put into effect the expressed wishes of survivors and of adoptive persons more generally to have access to their original birth certificates.

The introduction of the Bill on today's Order Paper is particularly timely as it comes in the wake of the compelling and extraordinary programme broadcast on Wednesday night which I know many colleagues will have seen, which was the RTÉ Investigates programme "Who Am I?" into the practice of illegal adoptions. I commend Aoife Hegarty and the RTÉ Investigates team, and particularly those brave individuals who came forward and told their own stories of their discovery often quite late in their lives that they had in fact been adopted, and that their birth certificates or other documents had been falsified. They expressed their horror and distress at these revelations and that they are still not enabled to have access to original documents.

I also commend my colleague, Joan Burton, who as many will know, has been very vocal on the issue of the rights of adoptive persons to access information. In 2019, she published a Bill to address precisely this problem of falsified birth and adoption certificates. I supported her with that at the time. That was in the wake of the initial revelations from Tusla that it had received files from St Patrick's Guild which had revealed that 126 cases of illegal registrations of birth or adoption had been exposed to it. This week's RTÉ programme has revealed that there may be many more than 126 cases where adoption records are birth records were falsified.

We need urgent legislation to address this. I ask the Leader not only to join us in supporting our Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill today but also to join in supporting the need for legislation to address the specific practice of illegal adoption and falsified records. The Bill we are introducing is simple and straightforward. It will simply provide adoptive persons with information from the index already in place, which maintains connections between entries in the adoptive children's register and the register of births. Our Bill would enable an adoptive person to request that information from the index so that they can access their original birth certificate. Since 1987, anyone north of the Border has been able to get their original birth certificate at the age of 18 if they were adopted at any time. In this jurisdiction for far too long we have had a far too restrictive view of the GDPR and of the Constitution, and it is time to legislate on this. I ask colleagues to support this.

I wish colleagues a happy International Women's Day in advance of Monday. I know we will have a debate then on that.