Birth parents who do not want to be contacted by their adopted children should be allowed to register a veto, the Adopted People's Association has said, while adoptees who don't want contact with their birth parents should have the same right. The association says adoptees should be given access to birth records as a matter of priority following the recent Supreme Court decision. A post-adoption services board should oversee the new system and help adopted people and birth parents to contact each other - except where one of the parties has registered a veto, the association says.
The Supreme Court decision cleared the way for the Government to legislate on the adoption information issue. It left it up to the legislators to work out how to balance the rights of those who wanted contact and those who did not.
Minister of State Mr Frank Fahey said recently "there is a clear need for legislation in order to provide a structured, coherent and equitable post-adoption contact system." But he indicated such legislation could be a long way off.
Additional staff have been approved for the Department's Child-Care Policy Unit and "a number of these staff will be assigned to the task of updating our adoption legislation", he said. "This will also include the legislation necessary for us to ratify the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption."
The Adopted Persons' Association, however, is opposed to the Department of Health and Children handling the issue. Changes in adoption information rights would apply only to people over the age of 18, said Mr Kevin Cooney of the association. "Our membership and constituency of adult adopted people find it bizarre and somewhat condescending that this issue has been delegated to a junior minister at the Department of Health and Children with responsibility for children's affairs."
The association is pressing for responsibility for post-adoption issues to be transferred to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. It also wants . Such a board, it says, which should to "provide a structured, coherent and equitable system in providing the resources to ensure that all adopted, informally adopted and fostered persons as well as those who were effectively fostered by the State through the old industrial and reformatory school systems are provided with information, as far as practicable, concerning their origins".