Law allowed ‘charities’ to exempt themselves from oversight

By Fiachra ó Cionnaith
Irish Times
June 11, 2014

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/law-allowed-lsquocharitiesrsquo-to-exempt-themselves-from-oversight-271657.html

Detailed 80-year-old legislation gave Government a clear right to all records on child deaths and adoptions in mother-and-baby homes as they happened — but allowed "charities" to exempt themselves from the oversight.

The situation is outlined in the Registration of Maternity Homes Act, 1934 — a law only passed in response to concerns over standards of care at maternity facilities, including religious-run “not-for-profit” mother-and-baby homes.

Documents obtained after a trawl of legal records by the Irish Examiner show the law, which remains on the statute, allowed Government unrestricted access to details, that 80 years later, it is only now searching for.

However, the law also exempted an unknown number of groups from the vital public safety net as they were considered not-for-profit charities that did not need to be examined.

As a result, files are in some cases only being handed over now, instead of when the incidents occurred, with no guarantee each facilities’ records matched what the 1934 legislation sought among non-exempted groups.

In other cases, such as Tuam, the records were only provided to the HSE or local authority on the closure of the facilities — long after the incidents occurred.

Under the Act, available at irishstatutebook.ie, every “maternity home” in the country — a catch-all phrase which included hospitals and mother-and-baby homes — was legally obliged to keep a full record of the number of women and babies to arrive, and their exact time there.

It also said that a specific facility-by-facility breakdown of how many children died, when they passed away, and what they were suffering from also had to be kept — with facilities obliged to inform the “chief executive officer of the local authority” by registered post within 12 hours of any fatality.

In addition, any person who removed a child for adoption — an issue increasingly central to an independent commission of inquiry into the Tuam scandal due to claims of mass illegal adoptions — had to provide their full name, address, and the address of where the child would be housed before they could leave the premises.

The information demand related to all maternity facilities, which had to be registered with the State.

Any failure to provide the records in full — including claims they had been damaged or could not be found — was punishable under the Act by an unstated prison term or fine until the documents were found in full.

However, while the Act offered a clear breakdown of what was happening in the vast majority of facilities, an as-yet unknown number of groups were exempted from the legislation demands as they claimed to be not-for-profit charities. The exemption was allowed by the sitting local government and public health minister of the day, but could be overruled at any point.

Adoptions Rights Alliance director Susan Lohan said a full list of the not-for-profit facilities which did not provide the records due to the legal loophole must be provided, and needs to be urgently investigated.

She added that not-for-profits are effectively religious groups, meaning the Act “seems to be pointless”.

The Registration of Maternity Homes Act, 1934, was drafted in response to the “Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor, Including the Insane Poor”, which came to the Dáil on October 11, 1927.