Sir, – Further to your article, “Adoption patterns have changed a lot in recent decades, forum hears” (Home News, September 30th): the one pattern that hasn’t changed since the introduction of the Adoption Act 1952 is the right of the adopted person to know who their mother is.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, for once in Ireland, the rights of the adopted person was precedent. The Adoption Authority of Ireland and the Department for Children have never dealt with the rights of the individual once adopted.
Sixty-one years is a long time to wait for the law to change. We’ve been promised by successive governments that our voices would be heard and yet, here we are late into 2013 with nothing changed and no foreseeable changes in the near future. We are the last minority group in Ireland to be discriminated against.
Let none of us forget that the majority of children adopted since 1952 were done so under forced adoption procedures and also illegal adoption procedures, neither of which the Adoption Authority or the Government appear willing to investigate. – Yours, etc,
GRAINNE MASON,
Marlton Demesne,
Wicklow.