Sir, - I would like to join Bernie Harold (May 20th) in welcoming the launching of the Irish Adoption Contact Register's Internet site and also in encouraging natural parents to contact adoption agencies in the hope of facilitating the speedier reunion of parents and children.
As a child given for adoption back in the 1940s, when legal adoption didn't exist in Ireland and when the stigma of illegitimacy applied equally to mother and child, I had a long, tantalising search for my birth mother, only to discover quite late in life that I had actually spent my childhood , unknown to both of us , within only a few miles of her. When I finally found her we had only a dozen or so years to get to know each other before, sadly, she died.
However, she left me a totally unexpected legacy of an amazingly welcoming extended family which is a source of immense delight and getting to know them has been one of the most positive experiences of my life.
However successful an adoption may be, most of us have a deep seated need to know our own origins and to have a place in the continuity of things. I don't think it is ever too late for mothers and children to seek each other out and I do hope that with the help of this new facility , many other families separated by adoption will have the chance to rediscover each other and I wish it and them every success. - Yours, etc., Rosemary J. May,
Woodhouse Eaves, Leicester, England.