Ms Anna Corrigan:

I will start on the finding of the remains. I would prefer to roll back before I go forward. I was listening to Dr. McCullagh. I realise I cannot ask direct questions. I am at a loss as to how the remains were taken out of these small openings in the chambers. Remains were taken out and sent for carbon dating. They were also sent for the possibility of DNA examination. I have tried to ascertain where these remains lie and have come up against a blank wall. Forensic Science Ireland has said it did not receive them. I got this information under freedom of information, FOI, legislation. I am at a loss as to where they lie now. Are they in the jurisdiction of the coroner? That was the last I read of it in the FOI documentation but I could not get a direct answer. Are the samples degrading? How are they being held? Why did the excavation stop mid-stream? The opening up of these chambers may have caused more damage. I do not really understand it. Maybe the parts taken out belong to family members of those of us in the group or my brothers.

Reference has been made to individualisation with the remains. I believe identification is more important. That is where I would lean more in the sense of the collection of the DNA. Mr. Geoffrey Shannon completed a report on this. It is so important. I am not referring to DNA from survivors but from family members, because survivors have a different set of needs and wants. I am referring to taking DNA from family members and from the petrous part of the bone and the urgency of using SNP analysis. I know STR analysis is tied into Forensic Science Ireland and criminal cases. Yet, it was stated in the report that Tuam was unprecedented. If it is unprecedented and if there is no evidence of criminality or involvement of the Garda, they why not use SNP analysis? Why not go down that road? DNA is so important to us with regard to these remains. We cannot fully believe that every death certificate is the genuine article. It has been stated by Fergus Finlay of Barnardos that there was possible interference with birth and death certificates. That was in a newspaper article. There has been considerable anecdotal evidence and it was mentioned around Bessborough in another newspaper article. Can we be assured? There is an urgency here as well. As Dr. McCullagh said, the bodies are degenerating and the water table is fluctuating. SNP analysis is the way forward because there is no tie to criminality.

There is something else I query. When this information was released from the commission, it handed the site back to Galway County Council. It was covered over again and it put grass seed on it, and now a law is needed to reopen it. I find that crazy. Tuam was taken away from the commission but nothing leaves the commission until the commission is over. Then it was handed over to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs for part 2 where Dr. McCullagh and her colleagues were re-employed by the Minister, Deputy Zappone, after having been on the initial excavation, making the initial find. There are Chinese walls, they cannot speak about what happened under the commission because that is covered by the commissions Act, then the Minister, Deputy Zappone, presents that there are bodies that she has found - what should she do with them?

We have locus standi here. There has been a lot of talk today about whether people come forward. Our family members' names are lodged with our legal team so we have locus standi. I have two police inquiries myself.

An element of trust comes in. Where are the bones? How are the bones taken out? The DNA is very important to us. Are they dead? It even goes down to Ms Toni Maguire who came down from Northern Ireland. She was involved in the exhumations around the cillíní. She said, as Dr. Donoghue and Dr. Carlsson did, that even a tooth would do. That is where I stand on the remains. We do not know where they are. There could be parts of my brother. We need immediate identification for DNA. Individualisation can come later because, as the report stated, the bodies are commingled. Dr. Carlsson spoke of how they extracted DNA from the petrous bone. One body, if we have one skull, if we can access the petrous, if we can use the SNP the rest will follow. We need answers to know if they there. Are they dead? That is the first question and then we will decide where we go from there. We may agree as a family to move them over to the Tuam graveyard for proper interment once it has been determined that they are actually dead. We know as adults that a lot of time has passed. Sad as it is, we will not receive the full body remains for reinterment with family but time is passing and we are all getting older and our main issue is that our human rights are vindicated around the right to know what happened to our families. Mr. Buckley will talk about how much our rights have been trounced on. I am sorry if I am a little all over the place but there is so much involved in this and it is not just what members read in the newspapers.