The drafting of legislation, introduction of the Bill in Dáil Éireann, and amendments means that such services are not likely to be introduced for some time.

Time, however, is one resource that many adopted people who are searching for natural family members just don't have. On too many occasions adopted people have searched, only to find that the natural mother or father being sought had died shortly before they could be found — often this occurred after the search had been ongoing for many years.

The APA decided that the best way to help the largest number of people, prior to the introduction of statutory services, was to create the APA Irish Adoption Contact Register. Our online contact register is specifically aimed at people born in Ireland, adopted or fostered within or outside Ireland. The Register will also accept postal registrations and requests for database searches.

We said at the launch of this site "A lot of work has gone into the creation of this Register, and if we can help reunite just one adopted person with a member of his/her natural family, it will have been worthwhile.

Three years later, over 3,200 people have availed of this service and we have successfully matched over twenty people. It has been and continues to be worthwhile!

Click on a link to the left to continue using the Irish Adoption Contact Register.