Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on the work plan. It is a broad church of work and I look forward to working with him on it. I particularly lobbied for the employment regulation order for the early years sector and I was delighted when it made the programme for Government. I am particularly looking forward to the recognition of early years professionals.

Time is short so I want to address the recent mother and baby home legislation, which I willingly supported. Survivors and their families have had a long time of hurt and they deserve that anything to do with them is treated with the utmost of care, consideration and respect. I need to put on record that I am deeply disappointed and uncomfortable with the entirety of how the matter was handled, both in terms of the lack of consultation with survivors and the rushing of the legislation through the Houses. I would like to establish what the Minister has learned from that experience and how we will work together and he will ensure that it does not happen again. I want him to make sure that survivors' needs will be put front and centre from now on in any discussion he has regarding the mother and baby homes and those who survived them.

I respectfully submit that there are a number of priorities in this regard. Will the Minister furnish us with a timeline for the publication of a report? He equipped the Attorney General's office with additional personnel so its publication should be done without delay. I have no doubt the content of the report will be distressing for survivors and, indeed, all who read and hear about it. However, that phase of our history needs to be embraced in order for us to heal.

I welcome the Minister's commitment regarding the permanent archive. I will welcome a timeline in the selection of a site so that survivors can have their names known, where they wish to, and their stories told in an officially sponsored capacity as soon as possible. In my view, the Sean MacDermott Street plans look particularly exceptional.

The most important aspect of the rights of survivors is the right to their personal information and personal data. The pain of a lack of access to the entirety of their past is the pain I heard in the last few weeks and the one that most came out to me.

The experience of knowing that information about oneself is locked away in a box that one cannot get access to must be excruciating. I appreciate that there are competing rights and that there are needs in the public good, however, we also have an absolute need for transparency in that regard.

Last week, I called for the publication of the data protection impact assessments, DPIAs, carried out by both the Department and Tusla. The most important message now is that survivors must be at the centre of all decision-making, including the application of the GDPR. The Minister confirmed to me in the Seanad that Tusla and the Department are undertaking DPIAs in anticipation of receipt of the commission's documents. I am urging Tusla and the Minister to publish these assessments for absolute transparency and to ensure survivors, their representatives and advocates know, in advance of submitting data subject access requests, how the necessary balance of all rights are engaged when such a request is being administered. While the publication of DPIAs is not necessary under the GDPR, publishing them in this instance will strongly demonstrate the Government's commitment to ensuring that survivors are empowered to obtain the information if they so wish. That should be done swiftly in order to bring people some comfort. It is my firm belief that the application of GDPR may well arrest some of the issues in the here and now and may narrow down the issues in the creation of the information and tracing Bill and will bring about a swift resolution to some of the pain and hurt that is out there.