AN officially regulated contact system for all future adoptions is called for in a report published today by a group representing parents and professionals.
Adopted persons should also be access to their original birth certificates and should have a right to background information and support arrangements, the group advises.
The Adoption Review Group, which prepared the report, was chaired by Dr Joe Robins, former assistant secretary of the Department of Health and chairman of the Review Committee of Adoption Services 1984.
It comprised representatives of adoption agencies, the Eastern Health Board and Treoir (Federation of Services for Unmarried Parents and their Children).
Irish adoption laws and procedures are still based largely on the Adoption Act 1952. Although the legislation has been amended since then, the system, derives from attitudes and social circumstances of the 1950s. A review is long overdue, the report says.
It calls for statutory arrangements to provide for ongoing contact in regard to future adopt ions. This would include open adoption, in which all the parties know about the case.
The law relating to the recognition of inter country adoptions needs to be revised, the report says. A service to provide ongoing support for adoptive parents, children and birth parents should be introduced, as well as a code of practice for the agencies involved.
Under present law an adopted person is effectively denied access to his or her original birth certificate.
"This practice was shaped by prevailing views and attitudes when adoption was first introduced into Ireland and it rejects the determination of those times to impose confidentiality and anonymity. The denial of access to information regarding one's origins is now universally accepted as the denial of a basic human right."
Access to the original birth certificate would be insufficient in many cases to lead to contact with the birth parent, the report says.
"The State created the adoption "system. Now, in changed circumstances, it should afford every facility to adopted persons and their birth parents who wish to meet or to obtain information about each other."
Adoption agencies and a few other bodies such as Barnardo's, the Adoptive Parents Association of Ireland, Adoption Action and Adult Adoptees Association were doing their best with limited resources. That was insufficient.
"An improved, updated adoption system must ensure that there is sufficient public funding for an adequate, professional support service for those who require it", the report says.