An adoption rights campaign group has said a new Birth Information and Tracing Bill does not provide unconditional access to birth certificates for adopted people and is "deeply insulting" to them.
Speaking to RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Claire McGettrick, Co-director of the Clann Project, said that the bill "imposes" a mandatory information session on adopted people whose birth parents have registered a "no contact" preference.
She said this was "deeply insulting" and its function appears to be to ensure that adopted people understand the concept of privacy.
Ms McGettrick said the information sessions were intended to inform adopted people of their natural parents' privacy rights and to explain the importance to them of respecting those rights.
"Adopted people are no different from any other citizens, we are more than capable of respecting other people's privacy and it is extremely demeaning, discriminatory, and insulting to us to have any kind of mechanism in place on our statute books that suggests otherwise," she said.
Ms McGettrick called instead for the Government to set up a mechanism where adopted people are informed of what the natural parents contact preferences are "and we can take it from there ourselves".
She said that adopted people are more than capable of respecting people's privacy rights.
Ms McGettrick said that access to a birth certificate is a "most basic ask" that other citizens take for granted and is proof that someone was born.
The bill will be examined at the Oireachtas Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth today before it becomes law.
Ms McGettrick called on Minister for Children Roderic O'Gorman and the Government "to listen to us and trust us, as we have lived experience of this and we know what it is like to walk in our shoes".
