Birth Information and Tracing Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2022-05-24
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

As the Minister requested, I will clarify the position. Amendment No. 32 relates to a situation where someone makes an application to the register of births but no entry is found. Where a relevant body has received an application and does not hold the birth certificate, it will inform the applicant of that fact in writing and without delay. A person being told that there is no record of him or her is significant, and we suggested that this should trigger an investigation in each instance.
I had asked that if the Minister felt it would be onerous to trigger it in every instance, could there at least be some mechanism to deal with a pattern. He mentioned there may be some reason like a fire or something, but the Bill does not even require the authority to outline a reason for not having a birth certificate. People are simply told it does not exist. If there are fires, files lost, swathes of records from a particular institution that never filed them properly or whatever, we want those issues to be addressed rather than it being the luck of the draw as to whether someone gets a birth certificate.
At the moment section 4 simply provides that persons are just informed that a body does not hold a birth certificate for them. However, there should be a clear next stage even if it is just information about what they can do next. In addition, if the State sees a pattern of relevant bodies informing a large number of people that they do not hold birth certificates, that should be identified and investigated in some way. As we are on Committee Stage, I am open to suggestions and thoughts the Minister might have. However, he might agree with me that to simply get a letter indicating that there is not a birth certificate should not be the end of that process.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2022-05-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-05-24