Clodagh Finn: Unless amended the birth information bill will do more harm than good

The Birth Information and Tracing Bill 2022 erects rather than removes barriers

In January, Children's Minister Roderic O’Gorman published a bill that does not provide automatic access to birth certificates and does not open the personal files held by the State, religious orders, and adoption agencies. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins Photos

Wed, 02 Mar, 2022 - 05:00

Clodagh Finn is a journalist, writer and collector of stories. Her recent book, The Irish in the Resistance, co-authored with John Morgan, shines a light on the forgotten contributions of the Irish who resisted Hitler during WW2.

I read the first paragraph of the Birth Information and Tracing Bill 2022, which is up for scrutiny before the Oireachtas children’s committee on Wednesday, four times before I felt I knew what it was saying.

It runs to 14 lines, contains almost 200 words and seven semi-colons. Even as a fan of the semi-colon, the sentence gasps for air at about line four. The campaign for plain English has clearly not filtered through to the circumlocution office at the Department of Children.