Adopted people will be given right to see their original birth certificate

Adopted people will be given the right to see their original birth certificate and learn the identity of their birth parents, even where they object, under new legislation to be approved by Cabinet on Wednesday and published this week.

The right has been sought by adopted people for decades, but successive governments have said they were unable to legislate for it due to the rights of privacy of the birth mother.

Now, however, the Birth Information and Tracing Bill will grant priority to the adopted person who is seeking to learn their birth identity by granting them for the first time the absolute right to see their original birth certificate.

Adopted people will be informed if their birth mother does not wish to have any contact with them.

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The Bill, which is being brought forward by Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman, was promised in the wake of the publication of the report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission last year. By relying on European laws on personal data, attorney general Paul Gallagher has advised Ministers that the right to access a person’s original birth certificate can trump the birth mother’s right to privacy.

Under the new legislation, which is likely to be published when approved by Cabinet on Wednesday, adopted people will be granted a right of access to all their birth and early-life records.

Birth mothers will be able to register their preference for no contact, and this will be conveyed to the adopted person in an informational session with a social worker. They will also be informed of the importance of respecting the privacy and preference of their birth mother before they are given a copy of the birth certificate.

This may also give the adopted person details of their father’s identity, though this was not recorded in some cases.

Other early-life and care information will also be automatically given to adopted people if they wish, including their baptismal certificates.

Tracing service

Previously adopted people had to hope that their mothers wished to be contacted before they were informed of her identity.

The new legislation will also establish a national tracing service to facilitate people who wish to establish contact with their birth relatives.

It will also establish a contact preference register for people to register their preferences for contact.

Successive governments in recent decades have promised but failed to introduce legislation granting adopted people the right of access to their birth and early-life records. Constitutional rights of privacy of birth mothers were cited on a number of occasions, leading campaigners to call for a referendum to change the Constitution to recognise the rights of adopted people.

This legislation seeks to bypass these legal difficulties by grounding the right to access to documents in the right a person has to their personal data.