It is almost impossible for most Irish people today to understand the world into which many of those who were adopted, fostered or put into orphanages were born. Many harsh things were done in it, which still cause deep emotional pain to a great many survivors. To spur us to redress the wrongs we need the anger of those who do not understand.
It was, above all, a fictional world in which it was assumed that Irish people did not want, and did not engage in, such a thing as sex before marriage a world in which even the word "sex" was rarely, if ever, heard and a world in which a child born out of wedlock had no place. Anything which contradicted the fiction of "holy, Catholic Ireland" had to be kept out of sight and out of mind. Reality was edited out, and in great detail. Books and films which threatened the fiction were banned.
But it was not only books and films that were banned. Children were banned. It was taken as absolute that a child born out of wedlock must be utterly concealed. That began with the pregnancy of the mother to be known to have become pregnant outside marriage would have devastated her chances of ever marrying. Such women were sent to mother and baby homes, usually in another part of the country, and often given a different name as they walked in the door of the home.
Concealment of the pregnancy and, subsequently, of the child, was seen as a necessary act to preserve the reputation of the woman and the family. The nuns who worked in these homes believed that they were doing what was best for the women and their children. The haste with which the mothers were later separated from their children was seen as the best way to handle these matters, as was the assumption, indeed the determination, that there would never again be contact between mother and child. We now know that for many birth mothers the pain of this separation has never gone away. And we know that many of their children, now grown up, desperately need to know about their origins and to make contact with their birth mothers. Many of these people were dealt with honourably by adoption societies when they tried to make contact others were dealt with honestly but with a coldness which hurt deeply.
There is an urgent need for the State to take this matter in hand by legislating for adopted, fostered and institutionalised people to have a right to their original birth certificates by providing for an appeal to a neutral body perhaps a Post Adoption and Fostering Board as was suggested this week - for those who feel aggrieved at the response from adoption societies and to enable counselling for adoptees when original birth certificates are to be provided.
There is also a need for a contact register for adopted, fostered and institutionalised people, where children and birth parents could record their wish to be contacted by each other. Birth certificates sometimes carry false names - another legacy of the fictional Ireland - and a contact register may help people to make contact whose birth certificates are, in themselves, useless. Is it too much to hope that the State will do something about this issue now? The promises made a year ago by the Tanaiste to get to grips with it have not been kept. But one senses that this time the issue will not go away.