Reilly pressured over adoption rights

Adoption campaigners have warned Children’s Minister Dr James Reilly that all six of his predecessors have reneged on promises to give basic tracing rights to adopted people.

Welcoming the Seanad debate on Senator Averil Power’s Adoption (Identity & Information) Bill, Susan Lohan of the Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA) said that every government since 1997 had consistently refused to legislate in the area, despite repeated promises.

“Both domestic and international human rights experts [continue] to suspect that this Government [will] continue ‘to deny until we die’ in a cynical and misguided attempt to spare the blushes of, and reduce the financial liability of the State and the various religious groups behind the systemic abuse of unmarried mothers and their children,” she said.