Institutions who alter or destroy survivor records could face criminal prosecution

LEGISLATION TO PROTECT the records of survivors of Ireland’s institutional past is to be brought forward to the Oireachtas next week.

It seeks to make it an offence for any person or private organisation to destroy or alter relevant records, or to remove them from the State.

The organisations include the Magdalene Laundries, mother and baby and County Home institutions, children’s residential homes, orphanages and other related institutions.

If requested by the National Archives of Ireland, they will be required to produce an inventory of the records they hold.

The legislation aims to preserve survivors’ right to information about their origins and the institutions involved in their lives.

It builds on the Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022, which allowed adopted people to access their birth certificates, medical records and early life information.

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Survivor advocacy groups Justice for Magdalenes Research, Adoption Rights Alliance and the Clann Project said the latest legislation is long overdue as many of those affected have reported difficulty accessing their records.

Some believed the church “may have destroyed documents or, in the case that some remain intact, that the church or institutions would not be willing to give them to the Centre”, one report said.

The legislation will be introduced as a matter of urgency, Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman said today.

The advocacy groups said: “While we recognise that this urgent approach does not allow for extensive debate in either the Dáil or Seanad, [we] are concerned that a long lead-in time would give more opportunity to records-holders to destroy their archives or remove them from the jurisdiction.”

Speaking to media today, Minister O’Gorman said that if institutions have done so before the legislation is enacted, then they will not be sanctioned as “we don’t do criminality retrospectively”, and the constitution prohibits it.

A redress scheme set up by the State to compensate survivors of mother and baby homes has faced backlash, as thousands of people have been excluded due to the fact they spent less than six months in an institution as a child, or their institution is not included in the list.

The Journal understands that a number of survivors are in the process of building legal cases to have other institutions added to the scheme, one of which is to come before the High Court next week.

Minister O’Gorman said today that the list may be expanded depending on the findings of a one-year review of the scheme, which will likely be conducted in March of next year.

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