Adoption and Children Act (Northern Ireland) 2022

Adopted Children Register

76.—(1) The Registrar General must continue to maintain at the General Register Office a register, to be called the Adopted Children Register.

(2) The Adopted Children Register is not to be open to public inspection or search, subject to regulations under this section.

(3) No entries may be made in the Adopted Children Register other than entries—

(a) directed to be made in it by adoption orders; or

(b) required to be made under Schedule 1.

(4) A certified copy of an entry in the Adopted Children Register, if purporting to be sealed or stamped with the seal of the General Register Office, is to be received as evidence of the adoption to which it relates without further or other proof.

(5) Where an entry in the Adopted Children Register contains a record—

(a) of the date of birth of the adopted person; or

(b) of the country, or the registration district, of the birth of the adopted person,

a certified copy of the entry is also to be received, without further or other proof, as evidence of that date, or country or registration district, (as the case may be) in all respects as if the copy were a certified copy of an entry in the registers of live-births.

(6) Schedule 1 (registration of adoptions and the amendment of adoption orders) has effect.

(7) Regulations may make provision for any person to have access, on payment of the prescribed fee, to any information contained in the Adopted Children Register.

(8) Regulations under subsection (7) may provide that the relevant period must have expired in relation to the information.

(9) In subsection (8) “the relevant period” in relation to the adoption of a child means the expiration of the period of 100 years from the date of the child’s birth or such other period as may be prescribed.

(10) Regulations under subsection (7) may provide for the Registrar General—

(a) to make arrangements with any person for the purpose of providing access to information as mentioned in that subsection; and

(b) for that purpose to transfer information to that person subject to conditions (including conditions as to the making of payments by that person to the Registrar General).