Thousands of people are being promised new rights to information, a potentially momentous step in a country where unmarried mothers were pressured for decades to give up their babies.
DUBLIN — For tens of thousands of people who were adopted in Ireland — or gave up children for adoption there, often under heavy pressure — knowledge that for decades was shrouded in secrecy and shame may now be a mouse-click away.
The Irish government introduced an online service this week that for the first time promises adopted people born in Ireland, wherever they now live, the right to see any information the state holds about them — including the names of their birth mothers. It also offers a free tracing service for anyone, including birth mothers, trying to find relatives lost to them through Ireland’s adoption system.
The authorities are permitted up to 30 days to respond to requests, and adoption rights activists are waiting to see how well the service works. But they say it has the potential to be a significant step in reckoning with a painful national legacy of mistreatment of unmarried mothers and their children.
Over decades, ending as recently as 1998, thousands of pregnant and unmarried women and girls in Ireland were confined to church-run “mother and baby homes,” where they were expected and often pressured to give up their babies after birth. An official inquiry published last year acknowledged poor conditions, high death rates and abuses at the institutions.