A failure to establish a commission of inquiry into illegal adoptions would leave the issue as an “open sore”, the State’s special rapporteur for children Conor O’Mahony has said.
A report by Mr O’Mahony last week found that Irish authorities had in the 1950s and 1960s “consciously turned a blind eye” to the practice of illegal adoption and that very little had been done on the issue since.
It said the State had been aware of the practice of illegal birth registration for decades before any serious action was taken to investigate and mitigate its effects “and that the action taken to date falls short of remedying the violation of the right to identity for many of those affected”.
Mr O’Mahony called for a formal State inquiry that adopts a truth commission model and said a specialist tracing team should conduct an review of suspicious case files.
The Government, however, has stopped short of agreeing to a commission of inquiry and said the priority is to pass legislation to allow adopted people access to their birth information, as well as other measures to record the experiences of survivors of mother and baby homes.
Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr O’Mahony said said it was “very important that an inquiry be held into these issues as they involve alleged human rights abuses on a large scale over a considerable period of time, and they have never been the subject of an adequate State inquiry”.
“The mother and baby homes commission had a very narrow remit on the specific issue of adoption and did not address the majority of these issues; and to the extent that it did address adoption, its conclusions were questionable and have been widely rejected by survivors,” he said.
“Any such inquiry should be established and concluded as soon as reasonably practicable to avoid further delays in the State’s response to these issues and to maximise the number of affected persons who will live to see its outcome.”
Human rights law
Mr O’Mahony said that if the Government decided not to hold an inquiry into illegal adoptions, the issue will be left “as an open sore”.
“The duty to investigate human rights abuses falls on the State; it cannot be outsourced to academics and journalists. A decision not to establish an inquiry into illegal adoptions would constitute a failure by the State to discharge its obligations under international human rights law.”
He also said the targeted review of suspicious files should begin immediately as these had been identified and flagged during an independent review process which concluded in 2019.
“As a general point, the need for all reasonable expedition is clear due to the lengthy delays that have already occurred in responding to illegal birth registration, and the advanced age of many of the affected parties.”
The rapporteur also said that allowing adopted people access to DNA testing was critical and needed to be done to help those affected.
“There are people who only know that they may have been the subject of an illegal birth registration due to DNA testing, and there are people for whom DNA testing offers the only realistic pathway to the reconstruction of their identity.”
