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.

The Government excluded an adoption agency from the mother-and-baby home inquiry despite being told almost two years ago that it had knowledge of “several hundred” illegal birth registrations.

Calls for an audit of all the files held by accredited adoption agencies and by the State, so that the full scale of illegal adoptions and birth registrations can be uncovered, have always fallen on deaf ears, writes Conall Ó Fátharta