New research has shown that 80% of all children adopted into Ireland over the past three decades have come from just five countries.

The Government has shelved plans to give adopted people automatic access to their birth information and records in its delayed information and tracing legislation.

Legal experts have said the Attorney General's advice to the Government that it is unconstitutional to give adopted people unrestricted access to their birth information is "incorrect".

A United Nations special rapporteur has again called for a full-scale inquiry into the scale of forced and illegal adoptions that occurred in Ireland.

The National Adoption Contact Preference Register (NACPR), run by the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI), was introduced in 2005 to enable contact between adopted people and their birth relatives.

Some parents whose children are placed in care voluntarily experience “soft coercion” where they are told that if they refuse to sign a voluntary care agreement, a court order will be obtained.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has acknowledged the “distress” experienced by adopted and illegally adopted people who are being refused access to personal information held by State bodies.

The High Court has dismissed a damages action against the Adoption Authority of Ireland brought by a 56-year-old woman who claims she was coerced into having her baby daughter adopted nearly 40 years ago.

The vast majority of the almost 15,000 adopted people and natural parents on the national adoption tracing register will have to reapply to be added to the Government’s planned new register.

Social media has changed the landscape in terms of adopted people tracing their birth relatives to such an extent that service providers here "are out of step with the reality".

There has been a 43% decrease in the number of children adopted from abroad over the past five years, according to the latest annual report for the Adoption Authority of Ireland.

For those of us who have been involved in adoption activism over the past two decades, it often feels as though the Government is engaged in a war of attrition against adopted people, writes Claire McGettrick.

The UK is putting considerable effort into changing its laws around surrogacy but what about Ireland? asks Brian Tobin

A service that helps adopted children who suffered trauma is being expanded.

A Labour TD has criticised proposed adoption legislation as it does not give complete access to birth information.

The “unstated and hidden objective” of the Government’s planned legislation to grant adopted people basic information and tracing rights is to “prevent access” to personal records.

The Government’s controversial legislation to grant adopted people basic information and tracing rights breaches international human rights law and appears to “ignore EU law entirely”.

The Children’s Minister’s failure thus far to consult us about the Adoption Bill, which is being rushed, adds insult to decades of injury, says Claire McGettrick

Speaking ahead of a debate in the Seanad on the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2016, Ms Zappone said she accepts there is criticism but she does not agree with it.

The new Bill “pushes to the boundaries” and represents “a major step forward” she told RTE radio’s Morning Ireland.

Adoption rights campaigners have hit out at children's minister Katherine Zappone's failure to consult them about the Government's latest amendments to its long-promised information and tracing legislation.

It comes as a number of prominent independent politicians introduced a motion in the Dáil calling for an immediate inquiry and for immediate redress to be offered to survivors of Mother and Baby Homes.

A number of prominent politicians have called on the Government to establish an immediate State inquiry into forced and illegal adoption.

The scoping exercise into illegal birth registrations is restricted to only examining records for specific markers which might indicate illegality.

The long-delayed report into illegal birth registrations will be submitted to children's minister Katherine Zappone before Easter.

Adoption rights campaigners have hit out at the Government’s latest amendments to its long-promised information and tracing legislation.

Congratulations are due to the civil rights activists who have persuaded Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone to look again at her Adoption and Information Tracing Bill and cut from it at least one of its more obnoxious — and quite unrealistic — proposals.

A spokesperson for the Adoption Rights Alliance has said that the proposal that adopted men and women will no longer be forced to sign an “undertaking” saying they won’t contact their natural parents in order to get access to their birth cert information “doesn’t mean a hell of a lot.”

A controversial provision requiring adopted people to sign an “undertaking” to not contact their birth parents in order to receive their birth information has been removed from the Government’s planned information and tracing legislation.

To want to see yourself in others is natural.

Thousands of people illegally adopted in decades past would have their original birth status confirmed under a bill from Labour’s Joan Burton.

The Government’s planned legislation to allow people separated from their families through adoption to have access to their own records and histories has been slammed as “unfit for purpose” by a civil liberties group.

Conall Ó Fátharta The State has been accused of being more concerned with managing the “potential scandal and legal liability” of illegal adoption, birth registration, and other coercive adoption practices than helping victims.

Teenager Jackie Foley was told to sign a consent form under a fictitious name in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. Her son was adopted and given a bogus name. Nearly half a century later, her treatment at the hands of State agencies has been as cold-hearted as that of the nuns, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has indicated a referendum may be required to give adopted people full access to their records and birth information.

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) has claimed that the 126 illegal birth-registration cases discovered by Tusla in May are “the only cases in which clear evidence of incorrect registrations has been found”.

A woman has launched a High Court challenge against a refusal by Tusla, the child and family agency, to consider her as an adoptive parent for a child she had fostered.

By 2015, the department was being told by adopted people, campaigners, and even by its own regulatory body that a full-scale audit was needed, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

The State has been urged to ensure family members of children who were forcibly disappeared through adoption or unidentified burials while in institutional care are given information about their fate — and warned that a similar system in Spain constituted crimes against humanity.

Tusla has refused repeated requests from the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) for access to certain adoption records it holds.

Establishing a culture of accountability has become this society’s Sisyphean task.

Adoption campaigners have hit out at Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone for refusing to reveal how many adoption records are being examined as part of the “scoping exercise” investigating the scale of illegal adoptions.

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs has refused to say how many adoption records will be examined as part of the “scoping exercise” investigating the scale of illegal adoptions.

Tressa Reeves, a mother who, along with her son who was illegally adopted, has settled a High Court action against a Catholic adoption agency and the State, has said she hoped the settlement would encourage others to act.

Thousands of people may come forward to sue the State and religious orders over forced and illegal adoptions following the settlement of a high-profile case in the High Court.

TRESSA Reeves never asked for anything for herself. All she ever wanted was for her son to be told the truth of who he was, writes Conall Ó Fátharta. It was a selfless act of a woman and a mother. A woman and mother ignored year after year by every State agency she asked to help her.

The Supreme Court has found the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) does not have jurisdiction to recognise the foreign adoption of a woman's niece and nephew after the woman and her husband also sought to have them adopted here under our law.

The mother and son at the centre of a High Court action over his illegal adoption 57 years ago - which settled following talks - hope the outcome of their case will encourage others in similar situations to act.