A Dutch citizen who never met her Irish father has published a page on the Internet in an attempt to locate him.
Ms Margaretha Post learned when she was 13 that her father was an Irishman working in the Netherlands who had left when his Dutch girlfriend became pregnant. Up to then she had thought the man her mother, Ms Jantina Faber, had later married was her biological father.
On her website she says her grandfather attempted, with no success, to find the Irishman. He could only establish that he was married and had children.
She began looking for him in 1996, through official Irish bodies and companies and in the Netherlands.
"As time went by I became rather proud of having Irish blood," she says on the website.
"In the year 1997 we were on holiday in Ireland. I fell in love straight away. Beautiful scenery, friendly people.
"I feel no anger towards my father. It might be that he kept this a secret all his life. I do not want to cause him and his family any pain.
"I hope he can understand that I want to know both of my parents. I have the need to know where I come from. This is a right that every child has."
Her father had gone to the Netherlands to lay pipes for the Dutch gas company, the NAM, she says. "I have tried the Foreign Office, the Justice Department, the NAM company in Assen, and the General Register Office in Dublin," she says. "I even looked up phone numbers in the Irish phone directory. My partner, Roar, has spoken with a couple of people over the phone but they told him that they were not related to the person we were looking for [if they were telling the truth or not, that is something we do not know.
"I would like to get in touch with any of his children, they are my half-brothers and/or sisters.
"My mother does understand my point of trying to locate him but she is not in any way helpful."
Email: margaretha.post@hetnet.nl
http://users.bart.nl/verdens /Eire/quest.html