Twenty-five Deputies are offering. I call Deputy Micheál Martin.

I want to return to the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2016. It deals specifically with the issue that has been revealed. It is important we would get an explanation and a statement at some stage as to why that Bill has been delayed. I understand there are policy issues that still have not been resolved, notwithstanding the fact the Bill has been published since 2016. Essentially, the key issue is balancing the constitutional right to privacy with the right to one's own identity. It is time the Legislature bit the bullet on that. This Bill has been going around for about five or six years, there having been various drafts of it internally and so on. As I outlined earlier, the policy issues were well articulated by Senators in the Seanad quite some time ago. One would have thought if the Bill was published that the policy issues were resolved. They should not be delaying the passage of the Bill. It was unfair of the Taoiseach to suggest that someone here was going to delay it. This legislation has been widely welcomed-----

The Deputy's time is up.

-----and requested by Members of the previous Dáil as well as this Dáil. We need to get a timeline for it.

I thank the Deputy for his question. As he will be aware, we do not have a majority in the Seanad, therefore, in that context, it has been more difficult to move this legislation through. In one sense though, it is not necessarily a bad thing. I have met Opposition and Independent Senators extensively regarding the policy issues. The Deputy is correct, it has to do with balancing the rights to privacy and identity. On the basis of those meetings, my Department and I have crafted many options to go back and forth with the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel in order to resolve that balance in a way that is constitutional. We have not been able to resolve it completely in a way that it is constitutional to the satisfaction of some of the Seanad Members. That is still where we are at.

The issues that have been raised today and discovery that has been made about which we are speaking creates an imperative for us to look again at the Bill, move through it and effectively agree on it but it seems compromises will probably be needed in order to move some of the amendments in such a way that they are constitutional.