Thousands may have been illegally adopted

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.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone revealed that Tusla had identified 126 cases where people had their births illegally registered between 1946 and 1969.

The cases were identified during an analysis of some 13,500 adoption records that were transferred to Tusla by the former adoption society, St Patrick’s Guild.