I hope Deputy Daly gets proper treatment.

Deputies, please.

I am sorry to ruin the Taoiseach's merriment but just over two weeks ago, I received a letter from an older lady who lives down the country. She had never written to a politician previously but was desperately seeking help and, with her permission, I am raising her case in the Chamber today because she represents thousands of other people who are suffering a similar torment. More importantly, I am raising it because the Taoiseach has the ability to sort out this issue. She told me that she was trying to locate her daughter, who had been born to her in Castlepollard mother and baby home in 1966 and to whose adoption she had never consented. She had been sick after the birth and was in bed on the morning of St. Patrick's Day, when her child was a couple of months old. She was told by the priest and the matron that the child had been adopted and was told to get up and go to mass. No papers were signed and no permission was given. This woman eventually moved on with her life, had four other children and got married. For the past 30 years, she has been trying to find her daughter. She contacted the Sacred Heart nun Sister Sarto, who was the order's search and trace co-ordinator. There were letters, telephone calls, meetings and excuses to the effect that her letter was not received or the order did not have the information. She was told her daughter's adoptive family did not wish to know her or to have anything to do with their. Her request became more urgent when both she and one of her other children twice developed cancer and she wanted her daughter to be aware of her medical history. Even that did not help and she was begging for assistance.

I contacted the Adoption Rights Alliance, which is a voluntary organisation of activists and campaigners, many of whom were born in mother and baby homes and themselves were adopted, and with which I had worked on such cases previously. Last Friday, I received a call from Mr. Paul Redmond of Adoption Rights Now! to tell me that the organisation had found and spoken to her daughter, who was absolutely delighted and was looking forward to meeting her mother. A 30-year search was ended within ten days because of a random correspondence with a Deputy. While being absolutely glad for those concerned, I was boiling mad because the Adoption Rights Alliance did not find that information by chance. This case proves positively that the information was always there but individuals and organisations consciously and deliberately withheld it from those who had a right to know. That is a crime and it is landing on top of the other crime that not only was that child illegally adopted, but it also was found out that the birth had been registered as a legal adoption, which was not the case.

There is no reason this should have happened or why this woman should have been obliged to endure such things. Unfortunately, however, there are thousands of others going through the same thing. In reply to a parliamentary question earlier this year, the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, confirmed to me that 25,000 files from the Sacred Heart mother and baby homes were in the hands of the Health Service Executive, HSE, in Glanmire, County Cork. Given the time importance in this regard, will the Taoiseach meet the Adoption Rights Alliance, which has proven its credibility and credentials in this matter, to discuss the establishment of an emergency task force to enable the thousands of people searching for their basic human right to an identity to secure it?

I listened to the story recounted by Deputy Clare Daly and I am glad it has worked out in this particular case. I think the Deputy mentioned the child was born in 1966, which would mean she now is 47. I am unsure whether that women was actively seeking her mother or her mother actively looking for her. Clearly, this was a good ending to a long-running saga in which a mother was looking for her natural born baby. As for the figure of 25,000 people, I do not know how many of that number, mothers or children, are actively looking for one another. I will ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to meet the alliance - I do not know whether such a meeting already has taken place - to ascertain if what the Deputy has outlined is true in respect of other cases. Clearly, the position has changed and people are entitled to find their natural parents and vice versa and that might be a useful engagement. I regret that it has taken a situation for the Deputy to raise it here on Leaders' Questions but it is an important, sensitive and personal issue and I am glad the Deputy's involvement has brought about this meeting and this acquaintance between mother and daughter. Perhaps I will ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to meet Deputy Daly to discuss these and other cases, as well as meeting the adoption alliance to ascertain whether a structured openness can be put in place to enable these things to happen when people want them to happen.

While it obviously is a happy ending in this case, the reason the woman concerned gave me permission to raise her case in this Chamber is that, sadly, there are thousands of others where the ending is not so happy. People have spent a lifetime searching only to find out perhaps that the parent had just recently died. This simply is not good enough. In September 2011, the Minister told me that the heads of the Bill on the new adopting and tracing legislation were close to completion and would be progressed fairly speedily. In July 2013, she told me that she hoped to bring the heads of the Bill as early as possible but the legislative programme states Members might get it in 2014. In September 2011, the Minister told me that the Sacred Heart files had been transferred to Glanmire and a system was in place to manage and help people to get the records. In September 2013, she told me that the 25,000 files had been transferred to Cork, that there was a significant demand to access these files and as a result, sadly, the HSE was not in a position to respond but that it was planning to reorganise its approach to dealing with the matter.

This is not good enough. This knowledge has been in the Government's hands for a long time. These are crimes that have been committed against people from whom their identities have been withheld. What I asked the Taoiseach for was not only a meeting. Some people who were illegally adopted recently met the Minister. What they want is action. They have proved that they can play a part in assisting to match people with their parents because of their own experience. Why not bring them to the heart of this matter and get them involved in sorting out what is demonstrably a crisis in people being able to access their files? I ask the Taoiseach again to bring them on board to deliver a solution to this torment that many women and their children have endured for decades.

There are 30 heads in the adoption (information and tracing) Bill, to which the Deputy referred, and it is expected to be published in early 2014. The Deputy says there are 25,000 files, and it has been confirmed here by the Minister that they have been sent to Glanmire in Cork and I assume they are stored and categorised. If people are entitled and eligible to access those files, where that is appropriate, it is obvious that a structure needs to be put in place where that can happen. The Deputy mentioned that there is very healthy demand from people to access the files and I assume that is a demand from people who want to access them for the purpose of finding or tracing their children or parents, as the case might be. If it is the position that the files are now in Cork but they appear to be inaccessible, then obviously that is a matter of structure or personnel or access, so let us examine that and see if can we improve the situation.