Madam, - As an adopted person I find it humiliating and disconcerting that the state differentiates between adopted and non-adopted people in the issuing of long-form birth certificates.
From the moment I presented myself recently at Joyce House to acquire my birth certificate I was treated differently from non-adopted persons. I was advised in hushed tones (as if being adopted were some sort of stigma) that I needed to leave the queue I was in and join a separate queue and fill in a different form. I felt slightly humiliated that my adopted status so markedly differentiated me from other applicants. This feeling was compounded when I was eventually issued with a "Certified copy of entry in the Adopted Children Register".
It is necessary to present a birth certificate to fulfil many tasks i.e., getting a passport, enrolling in a college of education, or even engaging in certain sporting activities I am not happy that, instead of producing a standard birth cert, I must provide a document that gives information relating to my personal circumstances, other than the necessary proof of date, time and country of birth and parents. The only document that I can obtain entitled "Birth Certificate" is what's known as the "short cert", which is increasingly deemed insufficient for many purposes.
I appreciate that underlying this issue is the protection of identify of the birth parents of an adopted person. Notwithstanding this consideration I would still think a more appropriate form could be issued to me than an entry in the "Adopted Children Register". - Yours, etc.,
JEAN DEEHAN,
Larchfield,
Dunboyne,
Co Meath.