Irish women forcibly adopted in the 1950’s demand access to their files from the state
Tens of thousands of people were sent for adoption around the 1950s after their mothers were deemed too young or unfit
Two women who lived for years not knowing they had been forcibly adopted have called for official State records to be opened to try and trace their birth mothers.
Theresa Tinggal, 58, and Maria Dumbell, 42, are among tens of thousands of people sent for adoption around the 1950s after their mothers were deemed too young or unfit.
“I was handed over to my adoptive parents at two-days-old and then registered as their legal child,” Ms Tinggal said. “It came as a great shock therefore when I discovered that I wasn’t who I thought I was.”
The Government has delayed until next year, plans for new adoption legislation which would allow people access to files to trace biological parents.
The women claim the Health Service Executive (HSE) has told them they cannot release files linked to informal adoptions.
Ms Tinggal was brought up as Theresa Hiney. The nurse who helped deliver her kept records of her own and a box with 1,000 names, including her name, has been recovered by her relatives. “The state could have found my birth mother but they didn’t really bother,” she said.
A website – adoptedillegally-ireland.com – has been set up to try and bring together people affected by adoptions authorised by hospitals, churches, religious orders and doctors after judging a mother unfit.
Ms Dumbell found out she was adopted when she applied for a passport. She discovered her birth was never registered and she only got an Irish passport after threatening a human rights lawsuit in Europe. “The attitude of the Irish Government when I asked them for information was ‘Well, things were done illegally then and we don’t know who you are’,” she said.
Clare Daly TD, who supports the women’s cause, said the records exist. She added: “It is not good enough to talk about guaranteeing children’s rights in a new referendum if we continue to ignore children failed in the past. The right to identity is the most basic human right.”
A spokeswoman for the Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said she had no difficulty in meeting the women. She said they had been urged to discuss their cases with the national specialist for adoption in the HSE before she would meet them. The minister has also been pursuing the new legislation with the Attorney General’s office.
Treasury Holdings to go into liquidation
Treasury holdings directors. Johnny Ronan (left) and Richard Barrett.
Treasury Holdings lawyers have today told the High Court that they will not be opposing an application by KBC Bank to wind up the group next week.
The move clears the way for liquidators to be appointed to the business, which was previously one of Ireland’s largest property operations.
It directly employs up to 45 people at its headquarters in Dublin.
At its height, Treasury Holdings was a multibillion euro property business with operations spanning as far as China.
But after the boom, it crashed with debts of around €2.7bn and it has spent much of the past year in a protracted legal battle with Nama.
Today, lawyers for Treasury Holdings told the High Court it will not be opposing a petition to wind up the business by KBC Bank on Tuesday next.
KBC says that it is owed more than €70m for the development of Spencer Dock in Dublin.
The move to liquidate the group is supported by Nama over concerns that assets of a Treasury subsidiary in Singapore were transferred to a company in the Channel Islands linked to Treasury director Richard Barrett.
This will be raised on Tuesday as KBC’s lawyers say they have not received an adequate explanation for this overnight transaction.
Wind energy delivery worth ‘30,000 jobs and €18bn to Ireland’
Ireland should aim to supply the rest of Europe, especially Britain, with wind energy, which has the potential to create 30,000 jobs here, a leading figure in the industry urged yesterday.
Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA) chief executive Kenneth Matthews also called for joined-up thinking between Government and enterprise to deliver the economic potential of wind energy. Upwards of 2,000 people now work in the fast-growing sector.
“For the first time, being at the edge of Europe gives us an advantage. Our ambition should be to provide Europe with wind energy,” Mr Matthews said.
Speaking at the launch of a new IWEA policy paper at a conference in Killarney, he said renewable energy exporting was a significant national opportunity that needed to be seized. He said the policy paper would help the Government ensure the framework was correct to realise this potential.
Mr Matthews said government policy to facilitate 4GW (gigawatts) of wind energy produced for the domestic market and 6GW for export could deliver up to 18,400 jobs by 2020.
He said renewable energy divisions are needed in the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and Forfá: “If state agencies work in tandem with industry, they could attract turbine manufacturers to Ireland, as well as supplying turbines to projects here.
The paper also calls on Government to develop a joint Irish-UK government policy. The UK needs 18GW of wind energy before 2020 and a policy should facilitate the achievement of at least 6GW of wind energy for export from Ireland. That would attract investment of more than €18bn into our economy, Mr Matthews said.
The paper also calls for a government-industry implementation group to bring together private and public stakeholders, agencies and private capital.
In a keynote address, Minister for Arts and Heritage Jimmy Deenihan welcomed the policy paper, saying it provided industry and the Government with a roadmap to maximising the benefits of wind energy.
Airtricity managing director Stephen Wheeler said the approach should be much more ambitious than it has been up to now: “The rest of Europe and, in particular, our closest neighbours the UK need renewable energy, Ireland, has the resources, the comparative advantage and the talent to deliver.”
Sligo widow sues over the contract killing of her husband
The widow of a Co Sligo man who was shot and killed in 1999 is suing four men for damages over her husband’s murder.
Margaret Madden, 58, a B&B owner at Lough Gara House in Monasteraden is suing the men for the loss of her husband and her own shock, pain and distress.
Terence Madden, 52, bled to death after being shot in both legs at close range on 28 January 1999.
Michael Doohan, a former member of the Defence Forces, and formerly of Ashbury Lawns, Ballinode, Co Sligo, Joseph Herron, formerly of Chapel street, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, and Patrick McGrath, formerly of Cuilpruglish, Gurteen in Co Sligo, received life sentences at the Special Criminal Court in 2000 for their part in the murder.
A fourth man, Thomas Derrig, of Battlefield, Culfadda, Ballymote, Co Sligo, received a three year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the possession a sawn-off shotgun.
The High Court heard that Doohan’s family and the Madden’s were neighbours and that both families ran B&B businesses.
The court was told that the murder arose from resentment felt by Doohan towards Terence Madden over the erection of B&B signs.
Resentment had also built over another incident when Mr Madden arrived at Doohan’s father’s funeral in 1997 to sympathise with the family.
Irish Parents urged to check their children’s weight regularly ‘like their eyesight’
Children’s weight, like their eyesight, should be checked regularly, a nutrition expert has told the joint committee on health and children.
Safefood’s director of human health and nutrition, Dr Cliodhna Foley Nolan, said parents did not find it easy to accept that their child was overweight or obese.
“We need to ‘normalise’ the taking of weight and waistline measurements so it is not seen as criticism or an insult. It should be the same as getting their eyes checked.”
Dr Foley Nolan said Safefood-funded community and pre-school programmes were conditioning parents so they were health aware and, eventually, at a point were they were comfortable with having their children screened.
Senator John Crown asked if fear of causing eating disorders was making people shy away from the issue of addressing children’s weight.
Dr Foley Nolan said the fear about triggering eating disorders, especially in teenage girls, had been overstated.
However, Safefood was ensuring that all information it provided on healthy eating was both constructive and positive.
“We know that we are getting the message out there — that there is a better lifestyle choice but it is a slow burn,” she said.
“That is why we need all the encouragement and support we can get from you [the committee], in terms of policies and funding.”
Sen Crown, who is a doctor and practices cancer medicine, said obesity was one of the risk factors for a number of cancers.
“And, surprisingly, if you have cancer, the chances that you do better in treatment is higher if you are not obese.
“It could be argued that, after smoking, it is perhaps the second biggest risk factor that our population is facing right now in terms of cancer.”
Sen Crown said there was no food that was dangerous when eaten in moderation, just as there was no food that was safe when eaten in excess.
“Simply banning certain foods won’t work.
“You have got to get the message across to people that it is the total volume and number of calories and the efficiency with which you absorb that food that makes the difference.”
Meanwhile, an international conference in Dublin to mark the 10th anniversary of the European Food Safety Authority heard that counterfeit food was likely to become an increasing concern in the future.
Chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Prof Alan Reilly, said the European regulatory agencies needed to be alert to emerging health risks, because of the free movement of foods across borders and the potential threat from food fraud.
He warned that the food fraud could sometimes pose a very serious health risk: “Tragically, this was the case in the Czech Republic recently where alcoholic products were unscrupulously contaminated with methanol, resulting in a number of deaths.”
He said there needed to be a high level of co-ordination among regulators and enforcement agencies.
Curiosity rover pauses to get the scoop on Mars
NASA’s intrepid Mars rover is pausing near fine-grained sand dunes to take soil samples that will be used to clean out any traces of Earth’s environment in the rover’s sample collection system.
Martian sandbox: An area dubbed “Rocknest” features fine-grained sands that will be scooped up by the Curiosity rover to test its sampling system and to clean out any lingering traces of Earth’s environment.
After creeping about 500 yards across the rocky floor of Gale Crater on the way to an intriguing intersection of different terrain types, the Mars Curiosity rover is pausing for a few weeks near fine-grained sand dunes to scoop up soil and run it through the vehicle’s sample acquisition system to clean out any lingering traces of Earth’s environment.
After three such “rinse and repeat” cycles, a scoop on the end of the rover’s robot arm will deposit small samples into a pair of sophisticated laboratory instruments, the Chemistry and Mineralogy experiment, or CheMin, and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, known as SAM. CheMin will use X-ray diffraction to identify the minerals in a sample while SAM will employ two spectrometers and a gas chromatograph to look for signs of organic compounds.
But first, all traces of Earth’s environment must be cleaned away to eliminate any chance of contaminating a Mars sample.
“Even though we make this hardware super squeaky clean when it’s delivered and assembled at the Jet Propulsion (Laboratory),…by virtue of its just being on Earth you get a kind of residual oily film that is impossible to avoid,” said Daniel Limonadi, a sampling system engineer at JPL. “And the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument is so sensitive we really have to scrub away this layer of oils that accumulates on Earth.”
Curiosity has rolled about 1,600 feet since landing August 6, heading toward an area known as Glenelg, where orbital photographs show three different types of terrain converging. Along the way, engineers have been testing and calibrating the rover’s instruments and subsystems, snapping pictures and collecting data.
Among the last items to be tested are a scoop on the end of the rover’s robot arm and an impact drill. Both devices are designed to deliver soil samples to inlets on the top of the rover’s body leading to the SAM and CheMin instruments.
Engineers have been looking for fine-grained sand to test the scoop system and to clean out its internal components. And they found what they were looking for at a site dubbed Rocknest, a football field shy of Glenelg. Rocknest measures about 8 feet by 16 feet and features dunelike deposits of sand as well as a variety of exposed rocks.
“What we’re doing at the site is we take the sand sample, this fine-grained material, and we effectively use it to rinse our mouth three times and then kind of spit out,” Limonadi said. “We will take a scoop, we will vibrate that sand on all the different surfaces to effectively sandblast those surfaces, then we dump that material out and we rinse and repeat three times to finish cleaning everything out…. Our Earth-based testing has found that to be supereffective at cleaning.”
The first scoop will be collected Saturday, and if all goes well, the cleaning process will be finished in the next week and a half, with part of the third sample being delivered to the CheMin instrument. A fourth sample then will be shared by both CheMin and SAM.
With the scoop tests complete, Curiosity will continue on to Glenelg where its impact drill will be put to the test for the first time, probably sometime in November. Though the scoop can collect soil samples from the surface, the drill will produce debris from the interior of targeted rocks, using the same delivery system employed by the scoop to reach the laboratory instruments.
“Getting these samples is kind of the keystone of the rover mission,” said Mike Watkins, a mission manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We’re being deliberately, incredibly careful. So not just taking (samples), but every time we take one, stop, open it up, take a look at it, make a video of us dropping it off. We’re taking a lot of extra steps here to make sure we understand exactly what’s going on, [things] we won’t have to do every time we do a scoop in the future.”
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