Adoption files - The right to our identity

"In all of us, there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we have come from.

Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning . . . and the most disquieting loneliness.” The words of Alex Haley, author of Roots, which helped inspire the work of the Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA).

If the civility of a nation is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable, then we in Ireland are still found wanting when it comes to how we deal with the rights of thousands of adopted people.

As the ARA points out, there are more than 60,000 adoption files held by the HSE, private adoption agencies and Church representatives, all of which are the sole source of people’s identities. They are also a source of great yearning — something the Government could alleviate by enacting legislation to allow the release of those files.