Irish Examiner view: Let adoptees trace their true identity

'RTÉ Investigates: Ireland's illegal Adoptions' highlighted the extent of official sanction of illegal adoption and child trafficking

The National Maternity Hospital.

It would be all too easy to consign the issue of illegal adoptions in Ireland to the dustbin of history but the reality is that there are thousands of people — many but not all of them now elderly — whose lives are still blighted by being denied access to their birth and adoption records. For the past two decades, successive governments have promised to bring in legislation to this effect, but there has been little progress.

Pioneering investigative work into illegal adoptions has appeared over the past decade in the Irish Examiner, much of it written by campaigning journalist Conall Ó Fátharta. In 2015, his investigation revealed a murky world of trafficking in children from Tuam Mother and Baby Home to families in the United States, a scandal that was eclipsed by the horrors of mass graves discovered on the grounds of the home.