Mr. Peter Mulryan:

I would like to speak in general. I have not been asked to give a DNA sample. I do not know why that is. I am available to do it. I did it privately and I got a lot of information from it myself, but it would be so important to get it done again to find out if she is there or if she was sold off and is in America. I just do not know. She could be alive. I went to America two years ago. I was in New York and a few places giving talks in universities and Irish centres. There was a great response. The hope is that if she is out there, she will put her head up somewhere and look for me. That is what I hope will happen rather than her being down in that sump of a septic tank decaying away in such a situation, not even put into a coffin, with just a bit of cloth left on a shelf under the darkness of night. Somebody knows, but there are no records whatsoever. It is scary stuff. One would make some allowance for it in a time of war but there was no war in this country that meant people had to do that with such innocent babies. We do not know how many thousands of babies died. What were the religious orders thinking of? Was the population in the country too high? What kind of an idea did they come up with to neglect an innocent human being like that?

There has been talk of a memorial garden, but that is not enough. These babies should be given back to their siblings and relations when they have been identified and the DNA has been done properly. That is what we need. We could take them to our own graves and graveyards. We know where we can go to pray if they are in there, but they must not be left there even a second longer. It is going on for the past six or seven years and it has been highlighted but we are no further on. If somebody found a strange animal at the end of their garden or anywhere on the road, or even a dead fish in water, the first thing he or she would do is report it to members of the Garda, who would come along and investigate why the animal or fish died. Yet here we have known numbers of babies and nothing was thought of them. There is more respect for the wild animals in this country than those babies all over Ireland, given what was done to them.