Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up on some of the earlier comments to afford the opportunity for elaboration.

Dr. O'Rourke said that there is public misapprehension or misunderstanding that a coroner's inquest requires a body. The fact it does not is news to me as well, and that perhaps an inquest could proceed without a body. I understand there are circumstances where this can happen, but in this context and to understand how the babies died, I am curious as to how we could proceed investigating in the absence of individual exhumations and identities. This may be an inhibitor. In my head I imagine this to be a long process, and that we would have to have an exhumation, an identification and then an inquest of some sort. Perhaps she will elaborate on that.

On Ms Corless's points regarding local knowledge, and bearing in mind that we have appendix A at the end of the opening statement by Ms Susan Lohan, and that we have other sites, we will need local knowledge.

Is there a recommendation by which the witnesses could foresee the inclusion of local knowledge in an anonymous capacity, for example, so that in some way we could garner that information? I have a familiarity with the Gacaca courts in Rwanda following the genocide there and I was out in Rwanda. I have seen some of that process in a little way but I also know that it was deeply flawed in other ways when there were no parameters around how people contributed. The usefulness of that information was open to question and it was open to abuse for various agenda reasons. I am curious to know how we could facilitate that to happen.