The Government has ditched its plan to give adoptees the right to trace their birth information.

The plan by children's minister Katherine Zappone has been knocked back after failing to prove acceptable to adoption-rights stakeholders.

Unacceptable

The Adoption Information and Tracing Bill, was stalled after the Attorney General said it was constitutionally unacceptable to allow unrestricted access to birth information for adopted people.

The minister was proposing to give Tusla power to track down both natural parents on behalf of an adoptee requesting access to their own early life and adoption files.

Where the natural parent did not consent to contact, both parties were to make their case before the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI).

Stiff resistance

These proposals met with stiff resistance.

Minister Zappone said in a statement yesterday that "despite everyone involved making significant efforts to reach consensus on the issue of release of birth information, it has not proved possible to reach agreement" and that this issue "must be set aside for now".

The Government will proceed with the least-contentious part of the proposed legislation –

• the safeguarding of records, tracing for the purposes of reunion,
• and for the National Adoption Contact Preference Register (NACPR), run by the AAI, to be placed on a statutory footing.

Falsifying or concealing adoption records will also become an offence.