A United Nations watchdog is concerned that travel and certification documents issued by Irish authorities to couples who want to adopt children abroad “lack specificity and can be easily falsified.”

Alcohol Action Ireland is calling on the Government to introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol as a matter of urgency.

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.

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 report will be based on the results of a scoping exercise announced in May last year following the discovery by Tusla of 126 cases in which births were illegally registered between 1946 and 1969 in the records of St Patrick’s Guild.

A 56-year-old woman was coerced into having her baby daughter adopted nearly 40 years ago when she was just 16, it has been claimed in the High Court.

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.

Adoption campaigners have said the long-delayed scoping exercise into illegal registrations is a “cosmetic” exercise as it is not looking at illegal adoptions.

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.

By Cliona Foley Irish sports bodies are waking up today to €5 million more in funding, their first increase from the Government in a decade.

The former adoption agency at the centre of the illegal adoptions scandal has gone into voluntary liquidation — just months after hundreds of illegal birth registrations were found in its files.

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.

A memo will go to the Government “in the coming weeks” outlining how to deal with the infant remains found at the site of the former mother and baby home in Tuam.

Here's your morning bulletin.

The Adoption Authority (AAI) sent three reports on illegal birth registrations — including a spreadsheet of 90 cases — to the Department of Children in 2015, three years before the St Patrick’s Guild scandal.

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

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.

A mother and son separated through an illegal adoption from St Patrick’s Guild will end a four-year battle with the State and the guild in the High Court next month.

Despite protesting otherwise, the State knew about the practice of illegal adoption for years, with Tressa Reeves gathering evidence of her son’s illegal registration in 1997 and the authorities informed in 2001, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

“The Authority notified the DPP in 2002, and An Garda Síochána in 2003, of a case of an alleged illegal birth registration"

The Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) reported at least one case of an illegal birth registration to the DPP and gardaí as far back as 2002.

Tusla has raised concerns about a further 748 adoption cases from St Patrick’s Guild which contain evidence of names being changed, cash payments and other “irregularities”.

Leo Varadkar has claimed that “what’s different” about the latest revelations in relation to St Patrick’s Guild is that this is the first time we have found “documentary evidence” of such cases.

Any audit of adoption records needs to examine all forms of illegal adoption and not just illegal birth registrations.

The revelation that potentially thousands of people may have had their births falsified so they could be illegally adopted may have profound legal consequences — including for inheritance rights.

Tusla was recording illegal adoptions and birth registrations in 2016 — two years before the agency’s revelation that it had uncovered unlawful registrations at St Patrick’s Guild.

A scoping exercise into hundreds of thousands of the State’s adoption records may reveal thousands of people who have no idea they were illegally adopted.

The Irish Examiner first wrote about Tressa Reeves in 2010. Her case sparked the first-ever audit of records by the then Adoption Board and highlighted again Ireland’s murky adoption history.

Finally there will be a sample audit of all records held by the State, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

Tusla has refused to say if it informed the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of evidence it has held since 2003 that children from the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home were buried in unmarked graves as recently as 1990.

The Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) has said it was “not aware” that a formerly accredited adoption agency owned an unmarked grave in which children were buried as late as 1990.

Alcohol has claimed the lives of 2,000 people since the government first began deliberating over the controversial Alcohol Bill two years ago, a leading charity has warned.

The interests of business and public health advocates should not be given equal weight in discussions around the final form of landmark legislation on alcohol, according to a charity working in the area.

Tullamore will witness a rare family feat on Saturday.

Two-time Irish marathon champion Sean Hehir says he is far more inspired by legendary Clare hard-man Seamus Power than the Kenyan Olympic champion who took part in the recent bid to break the two-hour marathon barrier.

Revelations relating to mother and baby homes have brought Ireland’s “shameful indifference” to the rights of adopted people and natural mothers to the fore.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission has refused to confirm whether or not it contacted the Adoption Authority (AAI) about a section in its second interim report dealing with illegal birth registrations.

Smithwick’s is the first beer brand in Ireland with new labels detailing alcohol content and nutritional information.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission has yet to decide whether to ask for an extension of its remit to examine other institutions.