IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter
Adoption campaigners have again expressed concerns that tens of thousands of people could be excluded from the mother and baby home inquiry.
Ahead of a Dáil debate on the terms of reference for the inquiry today, the Adoption Rights Alliance expressed fears that the investigation will be limited to only the practices and procedures of institutions, adoption agencies and individuals with a direct connection to a mother and baby home.
The group said that if the scope of the inquiry was not widened, tens of thousands of mothers who gave birth in State and private maternity homes but suffered the same fate of forced and illegal adoptions as those born in mother and baby homes would be excluded.
Under terms of reference, the inquiry will investigate how unmarried mothers and their babies were treated between 1922 and 1998 at 14 State-linked religious institutions.
The three-year inquiry — which has a €23.5m budget and may cost millions more in redress — will examine mother and baby homes, county homes, vaccine trials on children, and illegal adoptions where babies were trafficked abroad.
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