DELVING into what was a dark and shameful era in Irish social history can be painful but Orla McCarthy and her team are ready to get to grips with it.

Orla is manager of the new Limerick-based Mid West Tusla office dealing with enquiries from adopted people who want information about their birth families and, just as poignantly, parents who want to know what became of the tiny babies they handed over for adoption.

Orla and her team have taken up posts in the wake of the launch last week by Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman of the new information and tracing services established under the Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022.

The landmark act now gives adopted people and parents who surrendered children for adoption a full and clear right of access to birth certificates and birth and early life information for those who were adopted, boarded out, the subject of an illegal birth registration, or who otherwise have questions in relation to their origins.

It also allows for access to information by a child of a relevant person where their parent has died, and for access by the next of kin of a child who died in an institution.

Sign up for the weekly Limerick Post newsletter

Orla told the Limerick Post that it’s hard to know yet what the demand will be for the service.

“The applications are just beginning to come down to us from the central service but we are expecting to be busy.”

The Limerick team will be…