Mr. Kevin Higgins:

I am satisfied that the Acting Chairman has declined to answer the question.

In addressing this committee I cannot but notice that in actual number it is 14 and, with a secretary, 15 in all. That is the number of attendees at the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942. In drawing attention to this unfortunate coincidence, I must acknowledge that the members here are undoubtedly horrified by much of what they have been asked to consider and are personally greatly affected by it. The coincidences, however, do not end there, in that both gatherings have a common purpose, namely, to produce a "final solution" to a pressing problem. The Wannsee meeting was to find a solution to the overflowing concentration camps of eastern Europe. Anyone with a flimsy knowledge of the 20th century knows how that ended.

This committee has a different problem. It is asked to find a "final solution" to the rather untidy problem of mass graves of children, victims of a wretched bargain between church and State from 1923. It is almost a singularly Irish problem. Everybody knows where the bodies are buried, so what are we to do with them? How does the State deal with its own egregious failings? The answer seems to be that it must ignore the existing law and introduce a new law, removing the only mechanism that provides for a finding in law as to cause of death, namely, an inquest. The result is that there will be no finding of blame or responsibility in law for their deaths. The rationale seems to be that, as these children clearly had no rights while alive, why embarrass ourselves by giving them any rights in death? This is indeed an unwholesome Irish solution to an Irish problem. There is no doubt this committee will be peppered with the proposition that mass graves such as Tuam present almost insurmountable difficulties in extracting and identifying the victims and determining the causes of death.

As in all such grotesque events, truth is the first casualty. Compared with grim events over the past 80 years such as Katyn, Srebrenica, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and so on, the mass grave at Tuam, in terms of recovery, identification and determination of causes of death, is a relatively simple task and we are happy to meet any assertion to the contrary with hard evidence.

If this Bill was genuinely conceived as a measure to bring dignity to these children and a measure of closure to their families, it would probably have been adopted on all sides and the need for pre-legislative scrutiny would not exist. To the members of this committee I say that if they permit this measure to progress, they do so with their fingerprints all over it and I believe they will come to regret it. This Bill should be returned to whence it came. Nothing of worth, humanity or integrity can be retrieved from it.