HUNDREDS, perhaps thousands, of children born to unmarried mothers in homes run by nuns or in county homes run by the State were flown to the US in batches during the 1950s and 1960s where they were handed over to their adoptive parents. Frequently, the parental names on their birth certificates were false.
Yesterday, Barnardos child care agency called on adoption societies and the State to reveal how many children were sent to the US during that period. The agency said it had had inquiries from more than 200 adults who had been sent to the US as children and who wanted to trace their birth parents.
The children ranged in age from one to seven.
Many have found that the parental names on their birth certificates were false and cannot trace their birth parents, Barnardos says.
In many cases, their natural mothers only knew they were gone when they went to visit them in the orphanages or county homes or to take their turn at minding them in the nurseries attached to the homes. Many of these mothers "have howled inside with the pain of it for the rest of their lives", said Ms Norah Gibbons of Barnardos.
"It is time for the agencies to tell the whole society why they followed that policy at the time," she said.
The societies should also provide information on how many children were sent and on how the adoptive parents were chosen, she said.
The State should take urgent steps to set up a contact register for children adopted in Ireland, those sent abroad, children reared in foster care and children reared in residential centres, she said.
Social workers and others working in adoption yesterday discounted claims that what was involved was a "babies for sale"
traffic.
Instead, the children appear to have been sent away as part of the process of hiding the offspring of unmarried mothers.
This may account for the falsification of birth certificates, according to a spokeswoman for Adoption Action, which campaigns for a contact register. Falsification of documents created great difficulties for people trying to trace their parents and she had encountered a lack of cooperation from some of the agencies involved in arranging adoptions.
Though women knew their babies would be put up for adoption, the babies were often taken without warning.
Some of the mothers' where allowed to stay in the homes with the babies until they were two years old.
"Women have described very sad situations where they went down to the nursery happily to see their 18 month or two year old baby and found that the baby was gone," said Ms Gibbons.
Falsification of names on birth certificates meant that birth mothers and their adult children were denied the opportunity to get in touch with each other, she said.