Liveline can be the most extraordinary programme, sometimes. And one of the things that makes it extraordinary is how, on occasion, a simple phone call about a particular issue can reveal the most unexpected, poignant and deeply moving of human stories.

Today was one of those days. And Ann O'Rourke's was one of those stories.

Ann is now 66 years old, and she contacted Liveline because she cannot get a birth certificate in order to apply for her Public Services Card. This is the card she needs in order to access social welfare payments, her travel pass and other services for older people.

“I can’t get a birth cert anywhere. I have looked everywhere, Department of Health, Sligo, Legion, Roscommon, Lombard Street. Everywhere. At this stage, I am at my wits end. I can’t get a bus pass, a pension pass, anything.”

But it’s the “why” in Ann's story that turned the tide on today’s story. Why can't Ann O’Rourke find her birth certificate?

Ann was raised in St Joseph's Convent in Longford, which she entered in the year of her birth, 66 years ago. She left at the age of 17, relocating to another convent on Baggot Street, in Dublin, until she got a job, taking care of six children. When she returned to the convent in 1976, aged 26, they had no record of her being there, despite the fact that it was her home for the first 17 years of her life.

St Joseph's Convent is no longer there, in Longford, but it operated as an orphanage throughout the 1950s. Ann never knew her mother, never knew whether she was alive or dead, and received no information about her from the nuns who ran the orphanage.

“All you can do is pray for her.” That was the message from the nuns.

Ann has no relations that she knows of. In fact, as became clear from the interview, she knows absolutely nothing of her background, even whether or not she is an orphan, which she always assumed she was.

She has a baptismal cert, dated September 2nd, 1950, but no indication as to when she was actually born. But getting back to Ann's initial problem, trying to access a Public Services Card, this baptismal cert is not adequate.

And it seems this simple fact, this simple inadequacy of the State to deal with its past legacy, is punishing Ann all over again.

“The other girls found their parents … people belonging to them – and I can't find nobody. If I could just get the birth cert… that’s all I want.”

Click here to listen to the full call, from Liveline with Joe Duffy.