Mr. David Dodd:

My view is not of any relevance, but the views of the ladies whom I have been dealing with are based on what they were denied. What we are trying to do is to fix the wrongs of the past, and everybody is trying to do that and to grapple with what is the right thing to do in that regard. We know what should have happened in the past because human rights case law tells us what we know already in our heart of hearts. People are entitled to be buried in a dignified manner. Their families are entitled to bid farewell, to grieve, to mourn and to commemorate the deceased. The problem is that these families did not get such opportunities. Once we have identified the problem, we can then consider what the solution might be.

What I hear from the survivors whom I have been dealing with is that they now want to be able to fulfil that human need to go back to a place, have it dedicated, sit on a bench, lay flowers and talk to their sibling. Mr. Mulryan certainly echoed many of the things I heard in the last year when listening to the survivors of Bessborough. What is not listening to them is sending down diggers and excavating the land. I state that because it is important to realise that the real game in town here is excavation and removal. The owner of the lands wants to remove the remains of the children from those lands and make it someone else's problem, be that the State, the coroner or the relatives. An apartment block is an understandable commercial objective, but from our perspective this is not right.

Therefore, the way to respect this situation from our perspective is to fulfil the rights identified in the case law. I refer to the right to go to the location, to spend time there, to have the place dedicated and to fulfil what really should have been done in the past. From our perspective, that is what should happen. The narrative is very important because there is this idea that it is not known where the burial site is. From our perspective again, however, the public body, namely, the OSI, is telling us that it has the record of the senior adviser going out to the location in 1949 on a specific day. He was there for three days. He records one of those days as being wet, and that demonstrates the level of detail that man went into. He noted where the burial ground was, so we know there is a burial ground, we know there are 900 children and we know there is a man out there with the relevant expertise. That is the best evidence for us. We cannot, therefore, understand this idea that the site is not known. We really cannot understand it.

The difficulty with saying the site is not known is that it will then be possible for the owner to proceed to develop the lands. That is really the problem with going down that route. From our perspective then, if one looks at the evidence it is clear where the location of the burial site is. It does not mean babies were not buried elsewhere, but we know where the main children's burial ground was because there was a man out there who identified and drew the site and then he got the nuns to sign off on it. When we provided this information to the commission, and admittedly we provided it very late, just some weeks before the report, we could not understand why the commission did not communicate with the OSI, which is a completely independent agency which has nothing to do with the Bessborough ladies or Bessborough at all.

From our perspective, the narrative that it is not known is dangerous because it allows avoidance of dealing with the problem. Once one knows where the burial ground is, then it is quite clear what should happen. The only way to stop that is to say we do not know where it is. That is really our perspective on things.