Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 14 April 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

General Scheme of a Certain Institutional Burials (Authorised Interventions) Bill: Discussion

Ms Susan Lohan:

There are two basic changes that could happen to this legislation in order to satisfy family members and survivors and our international human rights obligations. One is that we have a thorough investigation of the how - how did these children die? Obviously, the family members are horrified by the conditions in which the children were buried, but they certainly want to know if their children died of natural causes or if they were unlawfully killed or killed in suspicious circumstances. The second change would be not to allow the Government to decide not to investigate certain sites. All survivors and family members are equal. I tried to cobble together a very basic table which showed the number of significant sites where the number of deceased children has not even been established. That situation cannot be allowed to prevail. The Government cannot say, "Well, we do not know, so we are not going to bother with that and we will just memorialise, erect a statue or whatever". That cannot be allowed to prevail.

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