Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What is wrong with this State that it wants to put away now the records of the women it put away before? What is wrong with this State that it will add public insult to the personal injury it inflicted on thousands of girls, women and their babies? Its pursuit of decency, morality and respectability resulted in the persecution of the poor, the innocent and their children. What is wrong with this State that to this day, in 2020, it is still suspicious of poor women? It will scrutinise them for a few quid while it gives the bankers who broke us free rein. The Minister said that things have changed. I disagree because while we are debating almost a century of abuse, Aoife Grace Moore is writing about single mothers being intruded upon and pursued by inspectors from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

I will tell the House what is wrong with this State. It is a century of two conservative parties which between them toiled with the plight and the fate of Ireland's women. When the Irish revolution was done and independence was won for the Twenty-six Counties, the counter-revolutionaries of those two conservative parties shunted the women and the girls, the gun runners and the soldiers of Cumann na mBan back to their proper duties in the bedroom and in the kitchen, making the babies and making the dinner. I am talking about poor women especially, the miracle workers who managed to get themselves pregnant all on their own. For decades, these miraculous women were put away. Their children, taken, stolen and trafficked, were buried in septic tanks to ensure that, in the context of power and influence, the governing parties could call themselves the God-fearing Government of respectable mother Ireland; the irony of that.

That is why there was a tsunami of public calls and emails to Deputies and Seanadóirí on this Bill. Given the evidence of a century of women being put into laundries, industrial schools, asylums and mother and baby homes, today's women and feminists do not trust Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to do what is right now and was then, and the Minister should not trust them either. The tsunami brought about amendments from the Green Party Minister but the campaigners are not satisfied with his amendments. First, Tusla should never be given hold of these records. Second, we cannot have a report in November that reflects testimony given up to February. Third, these records must not be sealed because we must be able to examine what happened to these women and their children - our women, our children, each one a missing person, accused by propriety, convicted by the State for their crime of poverty, the worse crime of expressing their sexuality in a way that was beyond the control of church and State or their cheek of being victims of rape, sexual abuse or incest.

This State did it wrong but Sinn Féin and the Opposition, in their policies and amendments, are determined to right that wrong. The story of these missing women and their missing children tells itself in terms of the rubbish choices this State makes. It is our social dysfunction and the sadness that is just beneath the surface. It is a story that needs public examination and not the sealing of records.

I beg the Minister to accept our amendments. I beg the Members, including the women of the governing parties, not to support this Bill. We have had enough darkness from this State and it is time to give the affected people light.

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