For the past two decades, successive governments have promised to bring in legislation to this effect, but there has been little progress. Pioneering investigative work into illegal adoptions has appeared over the past decade in the Irish Examiner, much of it written by campaigning journalist Conall Ó Fátharta. It also concluded that the institutions it examined had “little to do with informal adoptions before legal adoption was introduced” in 1953. This continuing failure to recognise the hurt caused by illegal adoptions forms a continuum that perpetuates the wrongs of the past, right through to the present day and into the future. Conor O’Mahony, the State’s special rapporteur on child protection, has called for the immediate enactment of comprehensive adoption tracing legislation.

Source: Irish Examiner March 04, 2021 08:39 UTC