Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am taken with the submissions we have received today because it has shed new light on this legislation and has allowed me to think more critically about the flaws inherent in the legislation.

We, collectively and in a non-partisan way, need to find some mechanism to come together to ensure that this is a robust piece of legislation and that it deals with all of the issues that have been put before us today by the esteemed persons who have come before us and given of their time.

I want to pose one question to Professor Scraton or Dr. O'Rourke in respect of the transitional justice model, and this is something Ms Lohan has also raised, in particular in regard to the issue of accountability, truth telling, reparations and reform in a transitional justice model. It seems to me that it is not inherent or present within the legislation as it is constituted. We are talking today about finding a model that speaks to the bereaved families. To me, there is a model that could be used, and that is the Stormont House Agreement, where there was an historical investigations unit, an independent commission on informational retrieval, an oral history archive and an implementation and reconciliation group. I wonder if some of those ideas could be inculcated into this legislation to deal with the issues of local knowledge, so there is information gathering, retrieval and processing so as to build a more complete picture for everybody. That is the first question.

The second question relates again to Professor Scraton. As we heard in the opening remarks:

The Bill implies that families of infants and mothers who died in institutional custody will be compelled to make a choice between exhumation and identification of their relative's remains followed by reinternment on the one hand and the coroner retaining the power to hold an inquest to confirm the deceased's identity, approximately when he or she died, where he or she died and, most important, how he or she died.

Will Professor Scraton elaborate on that? It seems to me that he and Dr. O’Rourke are saying that if we proceed with the legislation as it is constituted at present, we are potentially in breach of Article 2 of the EHCR. What I do not want, as one legislator, is to be in breach of any articles that deny people their natural rights. That is all I will say.