Minister for Children Roderic O'Gorman has said he believes new legislation has rebalanced the rights of the adopted person and the natural mother in a way that ensures people get the information they are entitled to, while also protecting the privacy rights of birth mothers.
Mr O'Gorman said "nothing is being held back" and he made it clear in January that he wanted to secure full unredacted access to birth certificates and information for all adopted people and those who were boarded out and those who had births illegally registered.
Those of us who have had our birth certs all our lives cannot understand the significance of being denied this right, he said.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said that the care and early life information will also be available to people.
Minister O'Gorman explained that people who were adopted will be provided with copies of the original documentation.
This includes the birth cert and birth information - such as the father's name. For those who were boarded out, they will receive information about where they went and whose care they were in.
Medical and early life information will also be provided, along with any letters or momentos that may have been left for children.
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Groups representing adoptees have repeatedly called for full access to information around their identities.
The Information and Tracing legislation applies to all people who were adopted, boarded out, the subject of an illegal birth registration and others with questions relating to their identity.
They will be able to access birth certs, early life information and medical records where any of that information is available.
The legislation will set up a new Contact Preference Register replacing the existing facility.
When the law is passed, there will be a three-month period when a parent can indicate their wishes relating to contact. When someone seeks access to a birth certificate, the contact preference register will be checked.
If there is no entry, or a parent has said they can be contacted, the information will be issued immediately.
If a birth parent has registered a "no contact preference", an information meeting will be held between the child and a social worker.
The adoptee will be asked to respect the birth parent's right to privacy and then full birth information will be released.
The legislation will go to the Oireachtas Childrens' Committee in the coming weeks for pre-legislative scrutiny.
The minister said that the State should have acted to provide information to adopted people years ago and that we have failed as a state and "let adopted people down" by not doing so.
He said new legislation that will provide adopted people with vital information is intended to remedy that and rebuild trust with them.
Mr O'Gorman said that the State does not have access to all adoption files and under the legislation will have powers to designate private bodies as information holders to allow adopted people apply directly to them for their information.
It will also have powers to place an obligation on secondary information holders.
Minister O'Gorman said he will engage with religious congregations, who ran the mother-and -baby institutions to secure their records into State control.
In this regard, there are powers to compel provided in the new legislation but he said he hopes that the congregations will see the provision of information as part of their duty to rebuild trust and make reparations.
He said he has written to all religious congregations about discussing information release and financial reparations but has decided not to meet them until the redress scheme is drawn up in full by an inter-departmental group.
The minister said he hopes this can be done "through negotiation but we have powers provided in legislation to compel if necessary'".
The scheme will be run by the Adoption Authority of Ireland and Tusla, the child and family agency.
