Surge in adoption tracing expected

A surge in people seeking to trace their birth relatives is expected, after the numbers registering for the service fell last year due to the pandemic.

The country's adoption authority has said it expects a surge in people seeking to trace their birth relatives after the numbers registering for the service fell last year due to the pandemic.

Last year, there were just 353 new registrants who applied to join the NACPR (National Adoption Contact Preference Register), down from 469 new registrants joined in 2019 and 561 in 2018.

According to the Adoption Authority of Ireland's (AAI) annual report for 2020: "In part, this decline can be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic and is most obviously reflected in the figures taken during the initial wave of the virus (March-June), whereby the authority received 100 new applications compared to 143 for the same period in 2019."

"It is anticipated that this trend will be reversed over the coming years," it said, citing "the release of adoption-related Government-commissioned reports and proposed legislative changes, especially relating to historical adoptions and the release of hitherto sealed documents, such as original birth certificates. The net effect of these changes may generate renewed public interest in the issue of adoption, especially from those directly affected by the process."

77 potential matches

Last year, there were a total of 77 potential matches identified between new registrants and previously registered family members – also down from previous years, where the authority recorded a total of 115 matches in 2019 and 105 in 2018. According to the AAI, "this drop may be attributed to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic".

By the end of last year, there were more than 13,800 registrants on the NACPR with over 1,270 matches. Traditionally, the majority of matches recorded on the NACPR relate to birth mothers and adoptees, with the second-highest category between siblings who were both adopted.

The annual report also shows there were 184 inter-county adoptions last year, the lowest annual figure since 2015.

The pandemic also impacted how the AAI conducted its work, including having to hold adoption hearings and orders using remote technology.

"Of the total of 81 [domestic] adoption orders granted in 2020, 39 adoption orders were granted via Zoom during lockdown, and 42 were in person under strict social distancing protocols," according to the report.

Under Covid-19 restrictions, no travel was permitted to any jurisdiction or country to effect an inter-country adoption.

Registering foreign births

Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Affairs said extra resources would be made available to tackle any backlog caused by the closure of the online Foreign Births Registration service.

It came after Fine Gael TD Colm Burke contacted the department to say he had received a number of contacts from people in recent weeks who wished to register a foreign birth, only to discover there was no online facility.

He queried whether a postal option was available and a spokesperson for the department said: "It is the intention of the Passport Service to resume the delivery of the Foreign Births Registration service once Covid restrictions permit this. 

"Planning is ongoing at present to allocate additional resources to this service to deal with the significant volume of applications on hand at present and to reduce the turnaround times to the standard period of six months as quickly as possible. 

"In the meantime, in cases of exceptional urgency applicants may continue to contact the Passport Service directly by WebChat."