Tracing legislation, to enable adopted individuals to
identify their biological parents, has recently become a subject of
debate, with TD Clare Daly, in particular, pressing Taoiseach Enda Kenny
and Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald
on the matter.
In response to Daly’s questions in March last year,
Fitzgerald agreed reform was very important and voiced her support for
“the strongest possible legislation to deal with this issue” but warned
there were constitutional obstacles.
In addition
to the commitments of Fitzgerald and the parliamentary questions of
Daly and other TDs, a number of organisations, such as the Adoption
Rights Alliance, Adopted Illegally Ireland and Adoption Rights Now, are
working to shed light on this issue, thereby dislodging another skeleton
from the Irish church-State closet.
Adoption Act, 1952
When the Adoption Act, 1952, was crafted, formalising the adoption process in the Republic, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was given an unusual degree of control even by the prevailing standards in the State.
Every line of the proposed Bill was sent to
the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, for his
scrutiny.
McQuaid proofed the legislation and insisted “the safeguards
must be such as the church considers sufficient to protect faith and
morals”.
To ward off “the evils of proselytism”
these safeguards sought to bar couples in mixed- religious marriages
from adopting children, and more glaringly prevented the child of such a
couple, for instance in the case of an orphan, from being adopted.
Similar
restrictions were placed on children of no religion and children aged
eight or more.
In the case of a mother who changed her religion within a
year of giving birth, a subsequent child could not be adopted until a
year had passed after the change. This last measure was to safeguard
against mothers switching their denominational adherence to find a
suitable home for their child.
The Department of Justice also made sure no measure connected to the Adoption Act would enable traceability, and prevented the Department of Health
from introducing reforms that would have provided a more
straightforward, State-registered paper trail.
The Department of Health
requested that the adoption register include the county of birth, a
proposal rejected by the Department of Justice, which argued: “The
number of children involved would be so small in this country that in
many cases such an entry would enable any person to trace with a strong
degree of probability (and sometimes with certainty) the connections
between the two entries by a comparison of dates, etc, in the register
of adopted children and the original register of births.”
Thus the paper trail was to be burned as a matter of State policy.
Contradictory agendas
This was not the last time that these two departments would clash over the welfare of children, carrying an important lesson from the period: the State did not act as one on matters of church and State.
Different
government ministers, different departments and different civil servants
pursued varying and often contradictory agendas.
When
the Department of Health introduced reforms in 1957 that required
adoption societies to notify public authorities before they placed a
child with the intent of adoption, so that local authorities could
inspect the prospective adoptive home, Catholic Social Welfare Bureau director and McQuaid’s point man on adoption issues Msgr Cecil Barrett was furious.
Barrett
confided to McQuaid: “All the Catholic adoption societies objected
strongly to this particular section as it cut right across the
confidential nature of the work as provided for in the Adoption Act,
1952. I drew the attention of the Department of Justice and the Adoption
Board to what had happened and it was the first either of them had
heard of it. It was the Department of Health which was responsible for
the introduction of this offending section.”
Of the adopted child, he
argued “legally its original surname is buried”.
Barrett
concluded: “No substantial change should have been made without the
approval of the hierarchy”. He had the 1957 reforms reversed in the
Adoption Act of 1964.
In response, McQuaid sent Barrett his “very grateful congratulations”, and he also wrote to the minister for justice, Charles Haughey,
to “express to you my own gratitude and the appreciation of the bishops
for your courtesy and for the unfailing co-operation of the department
[of justice] in all that concerns the adoption of children”.
The
State played an important role in denying some its more vulnerable
citizens a sense of their origin. Those who argue today that it has a
commensurate duty to address this have a strong case.