A History of Irish Adoption Legislation

Adoption law was first introduced in Ireland in 1952, complete with the approval of the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. Prior to the introduction of the legislation, children were technically “fostered” in “de-facto” adoptions. The children were not technically seen as the children of the adoptive parents and there was no provision for inheritance rights. It is very clear, upon reading the legislation and from researching documents available in the National Archives that adoption was not introduced to ensure the interests of children, rather it was brought in from the point of view of providing a mechanism for adoption.

Absolutely no consideration was given to the emotional effects of adoption on children. In fact, in stark contrast, every effort was made to ensure that adoption was final, with no mention whatsoever of the possibility of tracing and reunion. The idea was to ensure that the adopted child and natural mother would never see each other again, with the new adoptive family living happily ever after.

No mechanisms were ever put in place to ensure that adoption agencies, mother and baby homes and the Adoption Board conducted themselves in an acceptable way and this resulted in many years of abuse and in some cases, illegal activity – including the secret trafficking of over 2,000 children (that we know of) to America for adoption. (Banished Babies, Mike Millotte, 1997)

As we have said, the 1952 Act concerned itself with the mechanics of adoption, i.e. ensuring that the adopted child was seen in law as the child of the adopters. There were subsequent Acts after that, but 57 years since the initial Adoption Act, tracing and information has yet to be included in Irish adoption legislation.

In 2001, Mary Hanafin introduced an Adoption Bill that was nothing short of horrific. It contained options for "Contact Vetoes", including the possibility of fines and imprisonment if an adopted person didn't comply with a "no-contact" veto. That Bill never came to fruition, but when Brian Lenihan took over as Minister for Children, he used it as the basis for the 2003 Consultation Discussion Paper.

The 2003 Consultation took place in two stages – written and oral. AdoptionIreland, (the then representative organisation for adopted people), sent in a submission, as did the representative groups for natural mothers and adoptive parents and also the agencies and HSEs. Many individual submissions were also sent in.

In October 2003 the oral stage of the Consultation took place. Representative groups for adopted people, natural parents, adoptive parents, agencies, HSE’s and the Adoption Board all took part. There were large plenary sessions where speeches were delivered from Minister Brian Lenihan and Geoffrey Shannon (who is now Chairperson of the Adoption Board, but was then hired as a legal expert). The floor was opened to questions, which resulted in Minister Brian Lenihan experiencing quite a number of eye opening moments and learning some lessons the hard way.

Mostly, the Consultation consisted of smaller workshops in which the various aspects of the Discussion Paper were debated. It was an exhausting process for the adopted people involved as each and every adopted person that took part in the workshops had to explain in great detail the effects - emotional and otherwise - of being adopted. As reports came back from the various workshops, it was felt that for the most part, the message had been received. All of the hard work might just have been worth it.

In January 2005 the report on the findings of the Consultation was published and while some felt the document did not depict exactly what happened at the Consultation, there was undoubtedly a clear mandate for certain key aspects of legislative change, e.g. the right of an adopted person to their birth certificate.

The Discussion Paper, the 2005 Report on the Consultation and AdoptionIreland’s Submission are all available here.

In April 2005, the National Adoption Contact Preference Register (NACPR) was launched by the Adoption Board. It had been put together in consultation with an Advisory Group to the Adoption Board, which included an adopted person as a member. Leaflets were distributed to most homes in the country and there was a large media campaign.

In the meantime another Advisory Group to the Adoption Board was in the process of putting together guidelines for an Information and Tracing Service (Susan Lohan, Adoption Rights Alliance co-founder is a member of this group). In 2007, as a result of the work of this Advisory Group, the Framework for the Provision of a National Information & Tracing Service document was published. This document is available to download here.

In January 2009 Minister Barry Andrews introduced the Adoption Bill 2009. Despite all the work of the Consultation process, there are an alarming number of omissions from the legislation, as well as a new addition which serves to hide from adopted people the fact that they are adopted.

The Bill was passed by the Seanad in May and it is due to come before the Dail soon. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, which is due to debate the legislation soon, accepted a submission from Adoption Rights Alliance which outlined our concerns regarding the legislation.

UPDATE: The 2010 Adoption Bill was passed by Barry Andrews (who has subsequently lost his seat) without providing any information rights for adopted people. We will be submitting legislative proposals to the new government in the next month or so, which will outline our suggestions for statutory based rights.

The above is a very basic account of more recent developments in Irish adoption legislation, however there were many other events and changes that took place during the same time period. Many other aspects of legislative change have affected adopted people over the years, for example the Civil Registration Bill, which affected our access to civil records. In 2002, a Freedom of Information request exposed a government plan to deliberately obstruct adopted people from searching easily in the proposed computerised system for the General Registrar’s Office (not surprisingly, the system has yet to be put in place).

This information has been put together mostly from memory, so there may be unintentional errors. Should you notice anything amiss, please feel free to contact us.