Minister’s adoption apolog y was a ‘slap in the face’
O’Gorman says the State is ‘truly sorry’... but victims call it a box-ticking exercise
PEOPLE who were illegally registered at birth have criticised the ‘second-hand’ apology made to them by the Minister for Children last night which they were not invited to attend.
Roderic O’Gorman made the apology to a less than half-full Seanad during his second stage speech on the Birth Information and Tracing Bill.
He said that he was ‘truly sorry’ and apologised on behalf of the Government for ‘a historic wrong with deep and enduring impacts’ which ‘robbed children of their identity’.
The Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, Conor O’Mahony, recommended in March that a full State apology to those affected by illegal birth registration.
But victims and their families felt that this apology fell far short of this recommendation, particularly because it was not delivered by the Taoiseach in the Dáil like previous State apologies.
Susan Lohan, co-founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance, said: ‘People are appalled that Roderic O’Gorman seems intent on diminishing the seriousness of this. Through the choice of speechmaker and the choice of venue, O’Gorman and the Government are giving two fingers to those who are affected.’
Last year’s report by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes stated that the Department of Health seemed to have known about illegal birth registrations since the 1950s. These involved birth certificates which listed children as having been born to their adopted parents.
Speaking before the speech, Ms Lohan said: ‘To make it a sincere apology, O’Gorman would have to admit the State’s knowledge of these illegal practices. He would have to use unambigous language instead of referring to “incorrect registrations” which diminishes the hurt, the trauma and the shattered identities that people now are living with.’
Mr O’Gorman recognised that there had been problems surrounding the terminology of ‘incorrect birth registration’ but said that the Bill had been amended to include the words ‘false and misleading’ rather than the term ‘illegal’ that those affected are calling for.
Brian Webster, who only found out aged 59 that he had been born to an Irish woman three weeks earlier than the date on his birth certificate, spoke to RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Show yesterday about his frustration that he only heard about the apology the day before and was not invited to attend.
He told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘I think that the short notice we were given was to make sure that we couldn’t get any publicity in relation to this. We had to scrounge, contacting senators and TDs, to see if we could be present. What we’re being given seems to be almost a second-hand kind of apology. It’s being given by a minister, in the Seanad, at 6.30pm on a Tuesday evening when there won’t be many senators present.
‘It just again smacks of us being treated differently. A State apology would put us on an equal par with others... I’ve been a secret for 61 years. My mother was shamed into making sure that I was hidden because of the way the State and the Church operated at the time. And this is just really a continuation of the shame in the modern era.’
Mr Webster did manage to attend the Seanad to hear the apology last night along with a small group of other people affected including Lisa Kiernan and her 72-year-old mother who was illegally registered. Ms Kiernan said that she felt ‘very deflated’ afterwards and described the apology as a box-ticking exercise. Speaking to the Mail before the speech, she said: ‘We received an email that didn’t invite us and told us how to watch it on the television or on the internet and quite frankly that was just another slap in the face and it shows that they just want it to be swept under the carpet as has been done for decades.’
Ms Kiernan added that the Birth Information and Tracing Bill, despite having positives for adopted people, has ‘nothing in it for those who were illegally registered’. She criticised Mr O’Gorman for voting against amendments, put forward by herself and others, that would help include those affected by illegal birth registrations.
In response to Conor O’Mahony’s report, Mr O’Gorman said that the Government will set up a scheme which gives one-off payments of €3,000 to those affected
‘Continuation of the shame’
by illegal birth registrations. But this payment only applies to people whose illegal registrations were facilitated by St Patrick’s Guild, excluding others such as Theresa Hiney Tinggal who discovered at age 48 that she had been registered as the legal child of her adoptive parents.
Ms Tinggal, who now lives in Bournemouth, England, said that she only found out about yesterday’s apology through social media. She said: ‘They had the opportunity to get this right but they’ve gone about it completely in the wrong way. And you can’t have an apology without action so it all really depends on what they’re going to do now.’
Mr O’Gorman acknowledged this point too, saying that ‘apologies carry little weight unless backed by practical responses’. He added said that the Bill ‘addresses the situation for people subject to an illegal birth registration by providing clear and guaranteed access to identity information, as well as full information on the circumstances of their illegal birth registrations.’
The Bill now has to go through a number of stages in the Seanad before it can be signed into law.