Mr. Kevin Higgins:

Each of us have different points of focus and things with which we are most acutely concerned because we are familiar with them. I am, of course, quite familiar with Tuam but I also know a great deal about Bessborough. The committee gave quite proper credence to Mr. Dodd, barrister-at-law, and his considered and useful view of matters. I am a retired solicitor, no longer practising, but I did, in fact, take the first case on this issue into the High Court with my good friend Peter Mulryan some five years ago. For the first six days in court, I dealt with the matter without the aid of counsel, until I deemed it useful to bring in wonderful, learned counsel to act as a buffer between myself and the learned judge.

A number of members have raised the issue of burial records in respect of Bessborough. It is quite extraordinary that there are no burial records. This is a common feature of mother and baby homes. It is an extraordinary thing. In Bessborough, there was a death register and a collection of death certificates which the order had acquired or sought from the local registrar in respect of children who died, irrespective of where they were buried or not buried. The extraordinary thing is that the death register and the collection of death certificates existed side by side for over 30 years before the practice ceased in 1953 and death registers were no longer kept. I have a rather bad feeling that the intervention, or coming into force, of the Adoption Act 1952 might have had an impact in that regard. It could no longer happen that a young man - for example, a US Air Force person passing through Shannon, where Bessborough babies were picked up, on his way to South Dakota - could find out many years later where he came from, come back, discover a death certificate and say, "Hey, I'm not dead."

There is a very unfortunate gap in the records that should be addressed.

As to the legislation as a whole, I accept that everybody concerned in dealing with this is very keen to deliver something that will deliver justice. I have no doubt about that. However, because of the very different circumstances of somewhere like Tuam where one can identify where the bodies are and where there are enormous difficulties despite quite remarkable work by Mr. Dodd and others and in other sites, we do not have precise burial places. Bessborough is a nightmare. I know that. I have been there many times. One cannot create a Bill that will be a one-size-fits-all. There is no doubt that the fundamentals of our coronial system, which are fundamental to a system of justice in this country and have served us enormously well, are irreconcilable with much of this Bill. They are quite irreconcilable.

The other thing I would point out is that after the peace process in 1998, this House and the Upper House passed an Act, which was an act of reconciliation and very proper, to trace the bodies of the disappeared. There were quite a small number of these people and now there are fewer of them. That Act is a very short one. It worked to our existing law with respect to exhumation, inquests and post-mortems. We did not need a new Act to dig up a large part of County Meath, excavate almost the entire beachfront of County Louth or go to France and dig up another chunk of land. We did not need it. That Act, and the institution that grew from it, has no sunset clause and no limit on its budget and yet we are talking about having to do the most extraordinary things in the case of Tuam to conduct an inquest. I am not going to start defaming anybody but I think everybody knows-----