Clodagh Finn: Protect and release our archived personal histories
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It is difficult to describe the depth of emotion that washes over you when you discover the details of your own entry into the world more than half a century after the event.
I had the privilege of witnessing it again this summer — it happens often in the world of an adopted person — when a friend took delivery of a sheaf of documents revealing things that she did not know.
Not arcane things. Just ordinary, everyday facts that most take for granted — such as the name of her mother, her own name and where she spent the first two years of her life.
Despite the promises of the Information and Tracing Act (2022), it took much longer than anticipated to arrive, and the information was partial. But then, that’s a common experience for the tens of thousands of Irish people seeking access to their own records.
Adoptees trying to find details of their own birth was, until very recently, like venturing into Middle Earth to wrest treasure from the jaws of a mythical beast. Worse than that, you risked finding yourself on the wrong side of the law for doing so.
The first draft of the information bill threatened to fine or jail, for up to 12 months, anyone (ie an adopted person or someone acting on their behalf) who tried to get in touch with a person who expressed a wish not to be contacted.
This week, at least, the threat of legal action was put back where it should be — on the shoulders of those who keep myriad personal histories in private archives.
Under new legislation being fast-tracked by Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman, it will now be a criminal offence to destroy, alter or remove records of survivors of institutional abuse.
It might be late in coming, but it is welcome. And it is also very welcome to hear Minister O’Gorman describe its passage into law — hopefully early next month — as ‘urgent’.
Under its terms, the National Archives will be able to demand an inventory of records from their holders, though not, as yet, oblige them to grant access.
Nonetheless, this is significant progress and here’s hoping that religious congregations and other institutions will hand over documents, as they did in the north when similar legislation was passed in 2022. Since then, more than 3,000 items were given to Proni, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.
As those working tirelessly in this field, Justice for Magdalenes Research (JMR), Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA) and the Clann Project, will tell you, people seeking files are frequently told that they have been destroyed in alleged fires or floods.
While those excuses are often cynically used to hide the truth, it is also true to say that many documents are genuinely at risk. As human rights lawyer Dr Maeve O’Rourke said: “We in Justice for Magdalenes Research know of important institutional records being thrown in skips, and being left in abandoned buildings.”
The financial accounts of Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry, for instance, were in just such a building in 2018 when UCD law lecturer Dr Mark Coen accessed the site with permission from its property-developer owner.
They are now safe in the archives at University College Galway.
Other documents turned up in the most unlikely places. Four financial ledgers from the Limerick Magdalene Laundry were among the items a publican found when he purchased a job lot of furniture at auction.
In a similar vein, in the late 1990s, when Sheila Ahern and Mary Raftery were filming — a series that changed this country for ever — they came across a ledger of accounts in a cupboard of a building that was once owned by the Good Shepherd Sisters.
They made copies of it and returned the ledger to the congregation. As Sheila Ahern said: “If we hadn’t found the ledger, it would, very likely, have ended up dumped.”
The legislation, published yesterday, puts a long-awaited focus on the importance of such documents — and the need to preserve them.
As Dr Coen so rightly puts it: “These records tell the stories of thousands of Irish people and their families.”
We still don’t know exactly how many thousands have been affected by the institutions within this legislation’s remit. The bill covers Magdalene Laundries, mother and baby and county home institutions, children’s residential institutions, adoption, boarding out, orphanages and related institutions.
Take the example of mother and baby homes. We tend to talk in terms of the 34,000 people eligible for the government’s exclusionary redress scheme alongside the 24,000 people who have been left out, as if that is the complete tally of those affected by forced family separation in Ireland.
There were at least 170 institutions, organisations, agencies and individuals involved with unmarried mothers and their children in the last century, according to the data-gathering Clann Project, a joint initiative by ARA and JMR.
We have not yet even begun to scratch the surface of that unsettling truth. It is easier to contain the past and shoehorn it into a more manageable figure.
Yet, even within those constraints, redress has been delayed to those who are entitled to it, while those legitimately seeking information about their own heritage have faced barriers.
As Special Advocate for Survivors Patricia Carey said: “Significant and serious concern remains for survivors about access to personal records and information relating to their experiences in institutions and, in particular, at the number of records related to historical and institutional abuse which are in religious and private ownership.”
This piece of legislation, then, comes at a crucial time. It not only obliges those with information to protect it, but it signals a shift in understanding. Here, at last, is evidence that the government appreciates the importance of protecting documents which potentially hold the key to so many people’s obscured early lives.
The next step will be getting access to that information. And archiving it. The legislation must include provision for the employment of archivists — those valiant behind-the-scenes preservers of truth.
For now, though, this offers a glimmer of hope that the vaults of the past, shut for so long, will finally be forced ajar.