I thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, for giving me the opportunity to raise this matter and the Minister of State for coming into the House to reply to it. This issue, like the issue raised by the previous speaker, involves the anomalies and difficulties encountered under our adoption laws. The substance of this matter is that our adoption procedures are not coping with significant emerging developments which involve people who were parties to legal adoptions in years past and who are now trying to trace their blood relatives. It is mainly adult adoptees, who were legally adopted as babies, who now want to make contact with their birth mother. However, mothers, who gave their children up for adoption because they were either unmarried or very young when the baby was born, now want to get in touch in greater numbers. Because neither our adoption laws nor our structures can cope with this development, our system is blind and deaf to these people. Others, therefore, whose sole motive is profit, are providing a tracing service which is not being provided by the State.
These private investigators will take on the job of finding a relative. They will go to great lengths and search through parish and birth registers in an effort to put people in touch with each other. This is a hard-faced and insensitive system, because, by its nature, it cannot meet the sensitive and caring needs of the people in question. However, because the State and its agencies are not involved these private or freelance operators are the only options available.
The position is that because no guidelines have been laid down under which agencies can provide this post-adoption service a very patchy approach is adopted by individual agencies. There is no voluntary contact register in which people could indicate their wishes in regard to future contact. Neither is any special counselling service available for those who are contemplating making such contact or who have made such contact. These services have been available in Britain and Northern Ireland for some time — as we are all aware, the law has been changed there — where a uniform approach is adopted in tracing relatives following adoption. This can and does prevent distressing situations where a woman, whose child born out of wedlock was adopted, suddenly finds this adult offspring on her doorstep wanting to develop a relationship with her, and she cannot cope with the shock.
Legal adoption arrangements were entered into over the years with a surety of privacy and confidentiality for all concerned — the adoptee, the adoptive parents and the natural mother. This confidentiality must be respected while recognising that there is a need to facilitate people who want to go along this difficult path of discovery.
The measures I propose on behalf of the many agencies who have contacted me and the Minister for Health would cost very little but the suffering and distress saved would be considerable. There are more than 20 adoption agencies and individuals in an informal group determined to work to put this arrangement in place. They are deeply concerned at what is happening and at the lack of departmental action. They have indicated their support for an initiative and promised to facilitate the setting up of such a register and service in every way possible. Action is long overdue and I hope the Minister will give a greater commitment than the one given in answer to a parliamentary question last week. I hope action will be taken in this regard.
