Department refuses to reveal how many records will be examined in illegal adoptions audit

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs has refused to say how many adoption records will be examined as part of the “scoping exercise” investigating the scale of illegal adoptions.

The audit was announced at the end of May 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. The records transferred to the agency in 2016.

It is being led by independent reviewer Marion Reynolds and will involve the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) and Tusla.

Campaigners had called for the results of the scoping exercise to be based on a large sample of records.

It has now emerged that the number of records to be examined and the methodology used in the audit will not be made public and will only be revealed in Ms Reynolds’ final report, which is due at the end of September.

The Irish Examiner put a series of questions to the Department of Children, asking for sample size and methodology, and whether the audit will involve examining records for other forms of illegal adoption outside of those clearly marked as illegal birth registrations.

The department declined to answer the queries and stated that any information on what the audit will examine and how it will examine records will not be made public until Ms Reynolds’ report is published.

“A number of challenges have emerged, including issues in relation to the condition and diversity of the records concerned, which are being actively addressed by the review group. Tusla and the Adoption Authority are committed to full participation in the review and significant work has been undertaken to date,” stated the department. “Details of the sample and the methodology will be set out in Ms Reynolds’ report.”

When the Irish Examiner sought more details, it stated it had “nothing further to add to the response”.

As far back as 2015, the Irish Examiner revealed that the AAI had told the department in 2013 that St Patrick’s Guild was aware of “several hundred” illegal registrations.

Adoption campaigners have said they will not be satisfied if the audit is based on a small sample size, particularly in light of private admissions within the department that the scandal goes across multiple agencies and would require “massive resources” to investigate fully.

The revelation is contained in a note of an April meeting between representatives of the department and the AAI.

At the meeting, attended by department secretary general Fergal Lynch and prepared by the Department of Children adoption policy unit, there is an acknowledgment that evidence of illegal registrations was not confined to St Patrick’s Guild.

It was stressed that a full investigation of these issues would be “onerous, requiring massive resources”.

This newspaper revealed in June that Tusla had raised concerns about a further 748 cases from St Patrick’s Guild. These cases contain evidence of names being changed, payments being made to the agency, placements of children with no corresponding adoption order, and other “irregularities”.

Many of these children are believed to have been sent to the USA.