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

Photo of Mary Seery KearneyMary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am substituting for Deputy John Paul Phelan. Will Ms Fitzpatrick elaborate on her earlier point?

Bearing in mind that the context is that we are establishing an agency that will, hopefully, have increasing and evolving proficiencies and powers, which will then be able to facilitate a response to other burial sites as they emerge or as information on those comes forward.

Is there a best practice matrix for sampling? As public representatives, we have all experienced developers sampling in a way that suits them to come up with a particular response but we have also had the experience of bona fide investigations on-site which then found human remains afterwards

Is there a best practice matrix?

Ms Fitzpatrick said that there would be no appeal available in the case of a decision not to proceed. Any decision taken in administrative law is open to judicial review, so there is a judicial review option, and I suppose my question in that respect would be who has locus standiin that instance? If one does not know whether one's family member's remains are buried there, then it is questionable whether a family member would have locus standiin that instance. For this reason, I see a case for there being a statutory appeal mechanism. I ask Ms Fitzpatrick to elaborate on those points.

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