Questions over illegal birth registration numbers

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) has claimed that the 126 illegal birth-registration cases discovered by Tusla in May are “the only cases in which clear evidence of incorrect registrations has been found”.

The claim comes despite the fact that the department’s own regulatory body for adoption — the Adoption Authority (AAI) — sent the DCYA three reports on illegal birth registrations in 2015.

This newspaper has previously revealed that the AAI also warned the department about the scale of illegal registrations — specifically naming St Patrick’s Guild — on two other occasions in 2011 and 2013.

The 126 cases were found by Tusla in May in the records of the former St Patrick’s Guild adoption society. The records transferred to the agency in 2016.

A 2014 note of a meeting between two nuns from the adoption agency and representatives of Tusla acknowledged the St Patrick’s Guild records contained “some illegal registrations” and that “full details are available on the majority of cases”.

In 2015, the AAI gave the DCYA a detailed breakdown of some 90 specific cases, with names redacted, which it felt constituted illegal registrations. It also provided a summary of a smaller number of cases, including correspondence between the AAI and the affected individual.

In the letter attached to the reports, AAI chief executive Patricia Carey said the information had been collected on foot of a 2010 internal review and that “all information gathered at that time was sent to the department”. She also indicated that the authority had previously warned the department of the need for an audit of all adoption records.

The 2010 audit was launched by the AAI on foot of revelations in the Irish Examiner about the case of Tressa Reeves whose son’s birth was illegally registered. This was facilitated by St Patrick’s Guild.

The Irish Examiner put a series of questions to the DCYA including why no investigation was launched on foot of cases notified to it by its own regulatory body for adoption and what threshold it requires, in terms of evidence of illegal registrations, before it launches an investigation.

It declined to answer the specific questions but said that the AAI, unlike Tusla in May, had not been able to reach a “high level of certainty” that the individuals it reported had been illegally registered at birth.

The DCYA said the process for confirming the AAI cases “is not as straightforward” as those discovered by Tusla as the AAI may not be able to identify an adoption record for each case.

If such records do exist for a case, with either the AAI or with Tusla, there is no guarantee that the same level of evidence exists on the file which would allow the Adoption Authority of Ireland or Tusla to be satisfied to the same high level of certainty as in the St Patrick’s Guild cases that these individuals’ births were in fact illegally registered.

“In order to reach a high level of certainty that illegal registrations have taken place, it is necessary to have the relevant records in the custody of the State and have sufficient information on those records to allow any necessary cross checks. between Tusla, the AAI and the Register of Births to take place.”