BIRTH CERT WAS ‘A SHOCK’
EUNAN Duffy applied for his birth certificate two years ago so that he could get married – and discovered that he was adopted.
Within a matter of weeks of discovering the ‘stunning’ reality, he began the process of trying to find his birth mother. It took him six months to locate her.
Eunan had a happy childhood with his adopted family, who believed it would upset him if he knew the truth.
He advises people now going through a similar ordeal to take the situation into their own hands, and not to rely too much on State agencies.
‘You are given no direction, that is the unfortunate thing. So you have to do a lot of the trawling yourself,’ he said.
Mr Duffy discovered he was born in the former Marian Vale mother and baby home in Newry in 1968, when his mother was 22.
It was common then for southern mothers to escape the stigma of an unmarried pregnancy by giving birth in mother and baby homes in Northern Ireland.
He says of meeting his birth mother for the first time: ‘It was an unbelievable experience. We really connected.’
Offering advice to others in a similar situation, Mr Duffy said: ‘You just get tidbits of information. You obviously get a certain amount of information in your records themselves. You could go on Irish genealogy sites, or the Dublin archives. Up north you can go to the Public Records Office to try and find out as much detail as you can. People have to do a lot of work for themselves and they may come across stumbling blocks in the process.’
Mr Duffy is now a campaigner for people on both sides of the border who were adopted against their mother’s will.