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

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".

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.

Adoption campaigners have labelled Tusla ‘worse than nuns’ saying that information that was routinely released is now routinely being withheld, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

The Government has refused to give a date for the publication of a report from the long-delayed scoping exercise into the practice of illegal birth registrations.

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.

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.”

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.

The number of adoptions in Ireland has decreased by 35% over the past five years.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.