{"id":23006,"date":"2020-10-27T14:16:43","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T14:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/?p=23006"},"modified":"2020-10-27T14:16:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-27T14:16:43","slug":"repealtheseal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/repealtheseal\/","title":{"rendered":"#repealtheseal"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Shannon Sweeney<\/strong><\/p>\n

179,831, and counting people have signed a petition to prevent the sealing of records from the Mother and Baby homes for a further 30 years.<\/p>\n

Aitheantas, Adoptee Identity Rights started the petition on Friday and within 24hrs 20,000 people had signed it.<\/p>\n

On the Aitheantas, Adoptee Rights uplift page, they say preventing the sealing of the archive is important for the public to understand what happened in the Mother and Baby Homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time the Irish people can see for themselves the callousness with which the Irish State has treated Women and Children & survivors who came through Mother and Baby Homes, Baby Homes, industrial schools who are denied access to their own testimony, files and records – this needs to stop,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

On Thursday night, the Dail voted to seal the records for 30 years.<\/p>\n

The legislation would see the records be put under the guardianship of Tusla, the states agency for families and children.<\/p>\n

Minister for Children Roderic O\u2019Gorman has defended the bill saying it is not this bill but the 2004 Commission of Investigations Act that is sealing the records.<\/p>\n

However, according to the Irish Examiner, the Data Protection Commission has said the 2004 act was amended when the GDPR regulations came into effect in 2018.<\/p>\n

Article 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states that a person has the right to access their own information.<\/p>\n

Questions are outstanding as to whether the survivors of the Mother and Baby homes will be able to access their own records.<\/p>\n

President Michael D. Higgins signed the legislation into law on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n

However, in an unusual move, the president issued a statement along with the signing.<\/p>\n

The statement says that if a bill is found to be constitutional by the Supreme Court, it could not be questioned by another court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe President\u2019s decision to sign this legislation leaves it open to any citizen to challenge the provisions of the Bill in the future,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

When a bill is referred to the president for signing, the president considers whether a bill may contravene the constitution.<\/p>\n

The president can refer the bill to the Supreme Court for consideration.<\/p>\n

As the Supreme Court is the highest in Ireland, a ruling made is binding and cannot be overruled by another court.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s statement last night has been interpreted as an attempt by President Higgins to keep the possibility of a legal challenge open.<\/p>\n

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by Shannon Sweeney 179,831, and counting people have signed a petition to prevent the sealing of records from the Mother and Baby homes for a further 30 years. Aitheantas, Adoptee Identity Rights started the petition on Friday and within 24hrs 20,000 people had signed it. On the Aitheantas, Adoptee Rights uplift page, they say preventing […]<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11184,"featured_media":23007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[102063,102062,102064],"class_list":["post-23006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-mother-and-baby-homes","tag-repealtheseal","tag-tusla"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":17,"today_views":0},"views":1594,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/redacted-document-latin.jpg","wps_subtitle":"On Thursday night last, the D\u00e1il voted to seal the records from the Mother and Baby homes for 30 years","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23008,"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23006\/revisions\/23008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}