Ms Doireann Ansbro:

-----was on who would be the witnesses at inquests. One of the fundamental problematic aspects of what came out of the mother and baby homes commission's reports for us, particularly what was its fifth report, which came out in 2019, was the idea that the commission believed there are people in Ireland who have a lot of information about mother and baby homes, about burial sites and about what went on who are not coming forward. There is a fundamental question there about compellability - can we compel witnesses to come forward? I would argue that these kind of inquests need to have that power to compel witnesses to come forward who have information about what happened, both in the homes and how the deaths occurred, the circumstances around the deaths, whether it is separation of mothers from their babies, why they might have died, what kind of neglect was happening and what kind of overcrowding and lack of medical care obtained. There are so many questions to be answered and there are so many experts who are still alive because some of the homes were open until the 1990s. There are people out there with this information and we need to find a way to bring them forward to share what they know in order to give crucial answers to families and survivors who have gone on for far too long without those answers.