Ms Doireann Ansbro:

I thank the Deputy for the question. We wrote to the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence a few weeks ago and we asked if he would consider engaging with the Government to feed in those principles at every stage of the its response. Unfortunately, we have not received a response yet but we are still hopeful that we will. We know that he has engaged on this issue on a number of other occasions. We are certainly hopeful to have that response soon and we would be happy to let the Deputy know at that stage.

In terms of access to information, this cannot be underestimated as an issue of importance for survivors and family members. Access to information is part of many of these different human rights obligations the committee has been hearing about today. It is part of reparation. It is part of effective investigation to find that information and then share it with family members.

Reparation is not necessarily just about monetary compensation, it is also about having information and having access to what happened. As many other advocates have said in the past, it is not just about getting narrow information in terms of what happened to oneself or one's family members. It is also about understanding the process as a whole, what actually happened, what went on in these homes and who was responsible. There has not been enough emphasis on accountability. Access to information is all very well but if we have information about a person who is responsible for human rights violations, we need to ask questions about how we hold individuals, as well as institutions, accountable.