Ms Mary Harney:

I am deeply concerned that Ireland's international human rights obligations have not been fully followed or entered into in previous commissions of investigation.

I am concerned this may happen here too, that we will forget or ignore that Ireland has international human rights responsibilities and has abrogated those responsibilities or completely ignored them in the case of the investigations into the mother and baby institutions. Our commitments under the European convention really call for an effective investigation, which is one that involves - I know this is being included - family members of the deceased, and fully providing them with all access to all available information and records. However, I do not see how that can be done when records are already sealed.

For instance, people cannot get information from the Department about their own children being buried. I know that is certainly, and I have been allowed to say this, in the case of a Bessborough colleague where her brother died and the mother was not informed in time of the death or where the baby was buried. For years, she has searched, and during the commission of investigation, the commission found the baby was buried in Carr's Hill. Meanwhile, the mother had been told years ago that her baby was interred in the angels' plot in Bessborough. We have not had access to our records before, and this, for me, is crucial to the effective investigation. We must have access and the investigation must be in public. It must also ask all the relevant questions, the who, what, where and why. I believe that by following or incorporating the guidelines from the Minnesota and Bournemouth protocols, we can achieve this.

I am going to leave the rest of how that is achieved to the humanitarian law professors, who are going to follow, and to the forensic archaeologist. I believe the coroners must be involved. Maybe we should scrap this Bill and replace it with a more robust coroners Bill with extra funding. Bring on the forensic archaeologist and make sure the identities match with the sparse records we have or the unknown records for Bessborough. We know there are more than 900 children missing there. Where are they?