Dara O Briain opens up about difficulty of finding his birth mother: ‘The search is unnecessarily hard’

Irish comedian, who has since found his birth mother, says legal barriers prevent many adopted children from finding their parents

Dara O Briain has opened up about his search for his birth mother, after revealing that he was adopted.

The Irish comedian and writer told The Irish Times that he was told at an early age that he was adopted, and that he has a “fantastic relationship” with his adoptive parents.

“I come from an unbelievably content family background,” he said. “Being adopted [for me] is a state of knowing you’re adopted, then it not being mentioned for ages. And then at a point in later life going, ‘hang on, am I adopted?’

“I remember my father coming to London for lunch, and we had one of those conversations where you just clear the decks on everything. I told him, ‘I seem to remember knowing this’, and he said, ‘yeah, but it’s not a secret. I quit telling you because, you know, why would you keep saying it?’”

O Briain said the film Philomena, about an Irishwoman (Judi Dench) who embarks on a quest to find her adopted son (Steve Coogan), prompted him to start his own search.

“Maybe [my birth mother] might want to know how it turned out. And maybe it’s our responsibility to go, ‘that worked out … I did end up in a stable home, and you should be grand about that,” he said.

While the 48-year-old said his experience of the search in recent years had been largely positive, he explained that legal barriers made it near-impossible for many adoptees to access birth certificates listing their birth parents’ names.

“The search is unnecessarily hard,” he said “Start-of-life documentation, which concerns their lives – adopted people do not have the right yet to automatically get that.”

O Briain eventually managed to source his own birth certificate, which proved to be an emotional moment.

“I remember getting this birth cert and folding it and thinking, ‘I do not want to open it’. I wanted to find a quiet moment to open this document,” he said. “ I remember finding it and reading it for the first time. It’s an elemental piece of paper. It’s a huge document to get in your hand. I wasn’t crying or anything like that, but it was still ... that this other person is me.”

O Briain has since met his birth mother and biological siblings.

“I talked to my birth mother about it today, and I said, ‘look, did you want this?’ and she said, ‘there was no choice in this’. The whole thing was built on shame and expediency and a feeling of, just get this done.”

The comedian was speaking during the Irish Times Winter Nights festival, a series of online talks taking place each evening this week.

He is best known for his stand-up comedy performances, as well as for his regular appearances on BBC panel shows including Have I Got News For You, Whose Line is it Anyway? and QI.