I thank the Minister, Deputy Zappone, for bringing this issue to light. What we are seeing here is yet another bombshell exposing the toxic relationship between church and State in this country and the human damage and hardship it has imposed and continues to impose on very significant numbers of people. In this case it is clear that this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg but 126 people have had their identities stolen and their welfare, particularly in terms of their health, compromised by not knowing their proper biological heritage.

I was particularly struck by this scandal as I was adopted via St. Patrick's Guild in the years affected. I do not know if I am one of the cases involved. I am probably not but I have questions about it, as do other members of both my adoptive and birth families. Thousands of people have very serious questions to ask about, or are living in ignorance of, their true heritage. They are going to have life-changing events visited upon them. In some cases, these life-changing experiences are very positive and I was lucky that my experience was just such a positive one. For others, though, it is very traumatic and scary and it turns one's life upside down. It is absolutely critical that, having now revealed this, we respond urgently but with sensitivity to the needs and demands of those who are affected.

The Adoption Rights Alliance and the Coalition of Mother and Baby Home Survivors are furious about this and they say this has been known for 20 years but that nothing done about it. People spoke about it while in Opposition but later came into Government and did absolutely nothing about it. When issues were raised during the introduction of the adoption Bill about illegal as against supposedly incorrect registrations, they were not properly dealt with, and credit is due to Deputy Clare Daly in this regard. Some of the people affected are still not certain if they will gain access to information about their adoption as a result of it not being registered properly as a legal adoption. There are thousands more in the US as well.

We need to engage with the alliances and with the people affected, we need to seek their advice and we need to act on things they have been demanding for 20 years. There are very serious questions over the responsibility of the Sisters of Charity for all of this. I have been getting emails on this in recent weeks and I would like reassurances over their continued role in the National Maternity Hospital.

As I have said in response to others, the Deputy is absolutely right in his second point. As Fergus Finlay said this morning, this does not come as a surprise because people have been aware of illegal registrations and illegal adoptions in Ireland for a very long time, perhaps longer than 20 years. The number of people who participated in it, often the receiving parents, must add up to tens of thousands of people and when a new child arrives in a family without the mother being pregnant there must have been widespread knowledge across society of the existence of this practice. It must, in fact, have been commonplace in the past. Journalists have written about it, the Adoption Rights Alliance and others have raised it and it has been raised in the Dáil and the Seanad. What is different now is that, because of the analysis of these records, there was a marker on the records indicating "adopted from birth", meaning it was possible to identify that a person had been falsely registered as a birth child of parents who were not their birth parents. It may be harder to find evidence of other cases because they were concealed and records may not exist or have been falsified but we have to do our best to find out as much as we can and give it to the people who have, and always have had, a right to know their birth story, their identity, where they came from and who their parents are, as well as information about their medical history and that of their family.

There are 13,000 or 14,000 people who have come through St. Patrick's Guild and who must be concerned and have a lot of questions. I can tell them that if they have an adoption order they are not affected by this and are not one of the 126 people to whom we referred. If they were born before 1946 or after 1969, they are also not affected. If, however, they were born between those two dates and do not have an adoption order, they may well be affected. Conversations will need to take place with family members in the weeks and months ahead and there is a possibility they may be contacted by Tusla.

The Minister, Deputy Zappone, has met with the Adoption Rights Alliance and is very willing to do so again. We are very determined to pass the legislation but we are focused on giving our fellow citizens, those who were affected by this, information about their true identities and that is going to be the priority in the period ahead. If this is only the tip of the iceberg and it is a mammoth task, so be it. We have a duty to our citizens to do right by them, and we will.

I welcome the commitments given by the Taoiseach. I was born in 1967 so I may be affected but I will have to check all this. In any event, the outcome for me has been positive but for huge numbers of other people that may not be the case and they have a right to know. We need a clear commitment that all obstacles will be removed to access to whatever information or files can be found. I understand there are issues around indemnity for St. Patrick's Guild when it was asked for its files and I believe that, incredibly, it asked for €50,000 in 2016 to facilitate the handover of files. Was it given indemnities? I certainly hope not. St. Patrick's Guild is physically beside St. Vincent's Hospital and I went there to meet my birth mother.

We need clear assurances that the Sisters of Charity will have no influence whatsoever in the clinical practice of the National Maternity Hospital but I believe there is still a row about the title deeds and about land ownership. That is a bit much. These people have been saying how much they cared about unborn life for the past number of weeks but they showed scant regard for born children and their welfare. They lied, covered up and acted criminally but they are still trying to milk the State for money and to retain ownership of certain assets.

The Deputy is over time.

We need clear assurances and action on these matters.

The new National Maternity Hospital will be paid for by the State and will be owned by the State. It will be paid for by the people and it will belong to the people. That is not the case for the current National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street so there will be a significant change for the better in that regard. I do not know about the issue of indemnity but we have all the records.

It is a good thing that in the past couple of years tens of thousands of records have been transferred from private bodies, charities and adoption agencies to public bodies. It is because of that transfer of records that we have been able to come up with this new information.

In terms of the next steps regarding the other adoption agencies, as I mentioned, there will be a targeted sampling exercise carried out in the first instance. That will take about four months and will be overseen by a quality assured independent reviewer. It will be headed up by Marion Reynolds, who is a former deputy director of social services in Northern Ireland and has expertise in this area. Once that targeted sampling exercise is done, if it is appropriate and right, we will then go on to carry out a full audit of all the records.