Legislation to give adopted people a right to information on their origins will not be ready before the Oireachtas is dissolved, the Minister for Children, Ms Mary Hanafin, has confirmed.
However, a Bill aimed at creating an office of ombudsman for children would complete its passage, she said yesterday.
It has already been passed by the Seanad and is expected to be the last piece of legislation to be passed by the current Dáil.
The planned changes in information rights for adopted people have been condemned as inadequate by the Adopted People's Association.
Meanwhile, an inquiry into practices at mother-and-baby homes run by religious orders during much of the last century has been sought by the Adopted People's Association.
It says teenage girls and women, pregnant outside marriage, were not allowed to leave the homes until a "release fee" was paid.
This was as high as £100 in the 1950s, it says, and some women "escaped with help from their families who could not afford to pay".
Pregnant women had to do heavy manual work up until childbirth.
It complains that large government grants were made to mother-and-baby homes.
"For example, £65,000 was given to Castlepollard mother and baby home in 1938 for the conversion of part of an existing building to a maternity ward. The average cost of a house in Dublin at the time was £500," the association says.