A Cork couple with whom a single mother placed her baby about six years ago are still without a birth certificate for the child, because the birth was never registered. Their case was reported to the Southern Health Board in March by the Adopted People's Association. The SHB has so far refused to comment.
It is understood that in the meantime, SHB officials have been in contact with the family, who have found them "supportive." The family are believed to be in talks with lawyers on how to adopt the child legally and get a birth certificate.
According to documentation supplied to the SHB by the Adopted People's Association, the couple were turned down twice by an adoption agency before they became involved in the private placement. Their doctor later contacted them to say that a young, pregnant patient of his would be willing to let them raise her child.
The arrangement was that she would check into a private hospital under the name of the wife of the couple. The baby's birth would later be registered as if the baby had been born to the wife, the documentation says.
They discovered afterwards that the birth had not been registered, although the mother had given the wife's surname to the hospital as the surname of the child. Attempts to get the family doctor to arrange the registration failed.
It is believed that a number of key aspects of the documentation supplied to the SHB by the Adopted People's Association were contested by the couple.
The couple maintained they took an interest in the girl as an act of charity and that they helped her with her medical expenses for charitable reasons and without any expectation that they would adopt her child. They also maintained that it was the girl who suggested that it might be better if they were to rear her child.
They said that had the girl looked for her child back within a couple of years they would have given the child back as they did not see the arrangement as an adoption. They denied that the doctor had played any significant role in events (any such involvement by the doctor would have been illegal under the 1974 Adoption Act).
The child is now in school and has known no other parents but them, but still has no birth certificate.