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THE ADOPTION OF children is something that has been ingrained in Irish history for decades. Every now and again a movie or programme is shown and the issue of the adoption services in Ireland is pushed to the fore.
If you are adopted it might seem like a minefield to begin to start the journey of looking for your birth parents. But there are steps that you can take, when you are ready, that might result in reunion.
The Adoption Authority of Ireland
Speaking to the TheJournal.ie, the Adoption Authority of Ireland said adopted people really have two options when they begin their search.
They can join the National Adoption Contact Preference Register – see application form and leaflet here – which is open to any adopted person and any relative of an adopted person.
Registration is voluntary so it obviously requires both the adoptee and at least one birth relative to join. There are currently around 11,000 persons registered, roughly 70:30 adoptees to relatives, and there have been over 600 “matches” where more than 600 adoptees have been matched and put in touch with a birth relative.
A review of the register undertaken in 2007, looked at the types of calls the Adoption Board received on a typical day:
Register
A spokesperson said that the register is something that has to be welcomed but said that due to the Adoption Authority having its resources cut year on year, there are significant delays in matching people.
He added:
The problem is that Minister Frances Fitzgerald said that a draft bill on this issue is imminent, however, we have not seen this draft. I wish there was more we could do, but we don’t have the legal basis to do what we need to do.For example, all the births, marriages and deaths are now computerised. There is no reason why we should not have access to those records on our computers, but we do not. When someone comes to us looking to be traced, I physically have to go down to the Register Office with over 70 or so documents.
He added: “With the delays, I would urge people who are considering looking for their family to put their name on the register. When we get to you and if you feel you are not ready to proceed that is totally fine, but it is best to get the wheels in motion sooner rather than later,” he said.
Adoption agency
Another option people have is to contact the agency that arranged the adoption or whoever now holds the relevant records and they will try to locate and make contact with the birth parents and/or other birth relatives on behalf of the adopted person with a view to obtaining background/medical information and/or arranging for more direct contact if that’s agreeable to all concerned.
If the person doesn’t know which agency holds their records, they can contact the Adoption Authority of Ireland and they will be able to point you in the right direction.
However, similar to the resource shortages in the Adoption Authority of Ireland and due to the ongoing lack of any statutory basis for the provision of such services, they have been particularly hard hit by the cutbacks in the public service over the last five years and there are now very
considerable waiting lists for these services.
Waiting list
“There can be waiting lists of up to three years for depending on what agency you were adopted by. For instance, the HSE took over the remit of one agency which entailed over 14,000 adoption documents being handed over to them and only one extra social worker was assigned to handle that work load, so you can imagine the pace at which things can move,” said the AAI spokesperson.
He added that under the 2010 legislation, the AAI is the central authority for registered agencies but that they have “no real power over them”. He added that if someone has a complaint about one of the agencies, the AAI can be contacted, but again, due the lack of clarity around their legal status, they can merely point out to that agency where they went wrong.
He added that sometimes information people were provided about their birth parents may be wrong, stating that the thinking behind it was that “these children were going to new parents and there was really no thoughts that they would meet their birth mothers again, so sometimes information that was untrue was given, so that can be an obstacle. Also, due to stigma at the time, or due to instruction, mothers often gave different names.
Often, people choose not to go through the AAI, the register or their agency and armed with their date of birth, birth name and place of birth they go to the Register Office to get their birth certificate and then perhaps go on to look for their parents possible marriage certificate.
“Going through the index for the year you were born can be tedious rather than difficult,” said the AAI spokesperson, adding, “after much searching, you may well find the information you are looking for, but then what?”
He said that people should be careful about how they go about things, stating that knocking on someone’s door or sending a letter to their house might not have the same result you want.
People often need supports when they decide to trace their family. Supports can be offered from a range of services from the Adoptions Rights Alliance, the Adoption Authority of Ireland itself and the HSE.
“Even for the reason of finding out your medical history, it can be worthwhile, but I would urge people who are contemplating taking that step to do it now, take the first step and at least register,” he said.
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Retrofitting is only available to the people with plenty of cash . Same as most other benefits .
All I read in the above article is that we need to lower our living standards drastically. I do not trust anyone who tells me we need to eat less meat and then replace it with processed crap.
@An Drew Bearla: Yes, all that came out of the big meeting in Davos is that we must stop eating meat and dairy or the world will starve, and we must share our cars or cycle or walk, all the mullarkey Ryan is spouting and all from a bunch that then sat down to a four course meat laden lunch after flying in on 1500 private jets. The narrative to blame the ordinary consumer and deflect away from their lavish carbon laden lifestyles is ridiculous. Animal farm springs to mind
Will do this, will improve that. All talk and no action. The government has no motivation to implement any of these policies. Still using diesel commuter trains ffs.
@Tomo: We are making progress faster than ever before. I would live to speed it up too, but denial of what’s happening is nor helpful.
Bottom line is what comes out of our chimneys and out of the vehicle tailpipes isn’t good for us and has resulted in worse health for our population and more deaths. Even if you think climate change isn’t real (it is) then only a fool would continue to not tackle us poisoning ourselves.
@Barry Somers: a few more new taxes will sort everything.
That’s the problem, the greens solution is to tax the problem with no alternative. Of course, people are turning against it
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Not true.
@Nicholas McMurry: Yes it is true. Tax tax tax from a fella that knows about as much about climate change as my 8yr old. All the solutions Eamo is pushing for at present are financially or infrastructurally unviable like hydrogen which is inhibitively expensive to make or offshore wind which we have no way due to planning restrictions and lack of infrastructure make, but which are the chief objectives of E3G which ol Eamo is/was a senior associate of, as usual the self serving bull we have gotten used to in Irish politics. Any man that signs off on tax incentives for fuel for private jets and the writing off of carbon footprint for such is not green. No viable alternatives for anything, no reduction in our carbon footprint despite all the waffle, lying about our agricultural footprint throwing our farmers and food producers under a bus because they are a soft target while letting big corporations off the hook by giving them all our carbon credits from our grasslands, hedgegrows and forestry. Ireland is not one of the worst polluters as we are so often told to justify taxing the life out of us we just fall foul of the carbon credit rules that the large industrial countries set up to make themselves look far better than they really are, America, Germany France etc
@Nicholas McMurry: of course its true, if the government and greens in particular wanted to actually do something that wasn’t a punitive tax measure, it would be a shock.
Insulation is the most effective measure, yet they persist in making the retrofitting policy, part of the convoluted seai scheme which requires “trained” certified installers, when homeowners could, depending on their current skills learn to install it just as effectively themselves, by watching a few instructional videos, just like the “trained” installers did…
Subsidising insulation for domestic projects with a zero vat rate, would encourage more people to retrofit insulation to their homes themselves, reducing the amount of heating from all sources, along with particulate and carbon emissions across the board.
Better put the old age pension up. Where will all the food come from? More homes will be needed.
Anyone find those TRVs (main image) a complete waste of time?
I find that after a year the da*n thing is stuck on full heat. (I’ve checked the pin underneath and it seems to move freely) Was this just another way for the plumbers to make a few bucks :) ?
So, if we live in England or Wales and insulate our homes we could live for 836,000 years. I don’t want to live that long.
Why does an article in an Irish publication write about a foreign country without stipulating that it is a study done in that foreign country?
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