); We were told our mothers were prostitutes and ne er-do-wells. My mother was a senior civil servant, aged 30
Susan Lohan says adopted people have for decades been fed a false narrative about their mothers in the hopes they won’t try to find them. By Órla Ryan Saturday 16 Jan 2021, 10:30 AM Jan 16th 2021, 10:30 AM 119,120 Views 0 Comments
Susan Lohan
Susan Lohan
SUSAN LOHAN HAS been campaigning for the rights of adopted people for 20 years.
She co-founded the Adoption Rights Alliance in 2009 and more recently was appointed to the Mother and Baby Home Collaborative Forum.
The forum was set up in 2018 by then-Minister Katherine Zappone to help inform the Department of Children of survivors’ wishes on legacy issues related to the homes as the commission carried out its work.
Political Reporter
The Adoption Rights Alliance has welcomed confirmation that a referendum will not be required to give survivors of Mother and Baby Homes access to their records.
The Government will now proceed in bringing forward legislation on information and tracing.
At present, survivors of mother and baby homes have not been able to access documents which they say contain crucial information about their identity.
These files may hold details around medical treatment in their early days or how they came to be separated from their birth mothers.
Efforts by the last Government to change the law were stalled after the then Attorney General advised that unrestricted access would be unconstitutional.
The order of nuns that ran the infamous mother and baby home in Tuam has refused to say if it has increased its offer of €2.5m towards the cost of excavating the site where hundreds of infants are believed to have been improperly buried.