Adoptions and access to birth certificates: What rights do people have?

Is everyone entitled to their own birth certificate?
Yes and no. The public register can be inspected by anyone, but because adopted people may not know their names at birth, or their date of birth, or the name of their birth mother, they have no effective right of access to their own document. Nor does the law grant them automatic access to their original certificate as a right.

According to the Adoption Authority, the official body responsible for the handling and registration of adoptions in Ireland, this is because all birth certificates contain personal information about the birth mother, and “her right to confidentiality must be respected”.

Adopted people have a certificate of adoption, which has the legal status of a birth certificate but does not contain details of the birth parents.

So how do adopted people get a copy of their original birth certificate?
To get access to their original certificate, an adopted person must pursue what is often a protracted and frustrating process. They can apply to the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) which will tell the applicant the details of the agency that handled their adoption. In many cases that agency will have closed and its files transferred to Tusla, the Child and Family Agency.

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Tusla, or the relevant adoption agency, will then assess the case, contact the birth mother (if possible) and decide whether the birth cert should be released.

Most applications are granted – but not all. A substantial minority are refused, usually because the birth mother does not consent to the release. Last year, almost a fifth (nine out of 46) of all adopted persons who applied for their birth certificate were denied access to the information.

Is there another way of getting access to records?
Adoption rights activists increasingly advise those searching for their records to lodge a request with Tusla, the AAI, the adoption agency or anyone else who may hold records (such as religious orders) for their personal data under the GDPR, the European data protection law.

Under the GDPR, people are entitled to information about themselves held by third parties. Adoption rights campaigners believe this involves all adoption records and the original birth certs. However, Tusla and State bodies have taken a different, more restrictive view, asserting that this data relates to the mother and cannot be automatically released. Campaigners say this interpretation has meant that some people seeking access to their records are granted heavily redacted versions of the documents. While this can give adopted people something to go on in the search for their birth certificates, it falls far short of what many of them are looking for.

What about illegal adoptions?
For people who were illegally adopted at birth – either without the full consent of their birth mother, or who had their birth certificates falsified – there is another, potentially insurmountable, barrier to discovery of their natural parentage and access to their documents.

Where the records are intact, however, a right to access in law is now proposed. Though previous governments cited constitutional difficulties, Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman says that he will have the heads of legislation prepared by early next month which will establish a right – using the GDPR avenue – to access to birth and early life records. Sinn Féin will propose a simple Bill next week which it says would establish this right. The Government has not yet decided whether to support the Sinn Féin Bill.

What about when birth parents don't want to be contacted?
One of the things that officials are wrestling with is how to protect the privacy of birth parents who don't wish to be known to or contacted by children they may have given up for adoption many years ago. But the change that is almost certainly coming is that their rights of privacy will no longer trump the rights of adopted people to know their birth identities.