Michael Conaghan (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We cannot be the arbiter of what people in the future will do with this information. There is no way of putting cotton wool around this and protecting it. These records are a valuable resource because they shine a light on an area of Irish life of which no one is proud. They shine a light on things that happened. Dreadful things happened to young people and we must confront it, internalise it and come to terms with the fact that our culture is not always a pretty thing. There is an ugliness running through it, as there is in most societies. Putting it back for another 100 years or putting Tipp-Ex through people's names in the records does not deal with things. Dreadful things happened in our society, as in other societies, but the last thing we should do is pretend they did not happen or that these things happened to anonymous people. These things happened to people with names.