The Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022: What It Means for Adoptees and Birth Parents in Ireland

Before 2022, Irish adoptees faced a system designed around secrecy. Accessing your own birth certificate could require a court order. Information from mother and baby home records was frequently redacted or withheld. The experience of many adoptees was one of institutional resistance to basic questions about their own origins.

The Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022 ended that regime. Understanding what it now guarantees — and how to use the new services — matters whether you are an adoptee seeking information, a birth parent managing how much contact you are comfortable with, or a prospective adoptive parent trying to understand what openness will mean for your family.

What the Act Guarantees

The Act grants a legally enforceable right to personal information for:

• Adopted people
• People who were boarded out to families (the "boarded-out" system that preceded formal foster care)
• People who were subject to illegal birth registration
• People born in mother and baby homes or county homes

The core rights are:

1. Unredacted access to your birth certificate — the original birth record, not an amended version
2. Access to your "early life information" — records from the period before adoption was finalised, including records from institutions if relevant
3. Access to information about birth siblings, if available
4. The right to have your contact preference registered with the state

Who Can Apply and at What Age

Adults aged 18 or over can apply directly to the Birth Information and Tracing Service, which is operated jointly by Tusla and the AAI. Adoptees aged 16 to 17 can also apply, but in those cases the information is provided through the AAI, with additional procedural steps.

There is no deadline for making a claim. The rights under the Act apply regardless of when the adoption took place — someone adopted in 1960 has the same entitlement as someone adopted in 2010.

The Contact Preference Register

One of the most significant elements of the Act is the Contact Preference Register (CPR). This is a centralised database where both adoptees and birth relatives can register their preferences about contact.

Options for registering:

• Willing to have contact — the registrant is open to being contacted by the adoptee or birth relative
• Not willing to have contact — the registrant prefers no contact but consents to sharing medical information if relevant
• Willing to share medical information only — no personal contact, but willing to provide health information through an intermediary

What Happens If a Birth Parent Has Registered "No Contact"

This is the question that concerns many adoptees most. The Act is explicit on this point: a birth parent's preference for no contact does not override the adoptee's right to information. If you are an adoptee and your birth parent has registered a no-contact preference, you will still receive your birth certificate and early life information — but you must first attend an information session with the AAI, where the implications of the birth parent's preference are explained.

The Act prioritises the adoptee's right to identity over the birth parent's right to privacy. This was a deliberate legislative choice, informed by decades of advocacy from adoptee groups.

Tracing Birth Parents in Ireland

Beyond the right to documents, the Act established a statutory tracing service. This service, operated by Tusla and the AAI, assists adoptees and birth relatives who want to find each other and — if both parties agree — facilitate contact.

The tracing service is free of charge. The process:

1. You apply to the Birth Information and Tracing Service (via Tusla or the AAI)
2. The service locates available records and identifies any registered contact preferences
3. If both parties have registered willingness to be contacted, the service can facilitate an initial exchange
4. If only one party is registered, the service may attempt to contact the unregistered party to establish their preference
5. Counselling support is available at all stages for both adoptees and birth relatives

Tracing is not always possible — particularly for older adoptions where records were incomplete or where birth parents have died. But the service has access to records that were previously unavailable to adoptees, including records from mother and baby homes now held by the National Archives.

Access to Adoption Records

The Act also addressed access to historic adoption records — the files held by Tusla, the AAI, religious bodies, and other institutions. The position before 2022 was fragmented: different institutions applied different policies, and redaction was common.

Under the 2022 Act:

• Adoptees are entitled to their full personal file, not a summary
• Redaction of the adoptee's own information is no longer permitted
• Third-party information in the file (such as details of other family members) may still be subject to data protection considerations

Requests go to the Body where the records are held — Tusla for records it holds directly, the AAI for records within its registry, and specific religious bodies for their archives where relevant.

What This Means for Modern Adoptive Parents

If you are in the process of adopting today, or considering it, the 2022 Act shapes what open adoption in Ireland actually looks like.

The era of closed adoption — where an adoptee's birth origins were a sealed secret — is legally over. When you adopt a child in Ireland now, you are committing to raise a child who will, when they reach adulthood, have an absolute legal right to know who their birth parents are and to access records of their early life. Supporting that process — rather than fearing it — is increasingly understood as part of adoptive parenting.

Many adoption preparation courses now include specific content on how to talk to children about birth family identity, and on how to support a young person who eventually wants to use the tracing service.

For prospective adopters, our Ireland Adoption Process Guide includes a section on open adoption in modern Irish practice — what it involves, how to discuss it with your child, and how the 2022 Act changes what "closed adoption" previously meant in legal and practical terms.

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