Mr. Carl Buckley:

I am very conscious of time so I will try to be quick. I do not want to be quick or brief, but I must be, given the constraints. An earlier comment put it quite clearly: there is no trust in the State. All these individuals who remain in the various fields, pits and septic tanks, every one of them has been failed by the State. Those who survived have been failed by the State. There needs to be a process by which the trust is built. It is for that reason I say that this legislation is not actually required at all. What needs to be done is the coroners system needs to be funded and developed appropriately to deal with this. That way, one can guarantee an independent investigation into every single issue. It is a significant concern why the corner and the authority of the coroner has been explicitly removed in this Act. That goes no way to establish or build trust in the State, in fact, it exacerbates the position further. Every single victim, as Dr. O'Rourke said this morning, is entitled to an Article 2 compliant inquest as far as these issues are concerned. This legislation, in its current state, will not allow that to be done. It needs to be given back to the coroner, that way one removes any sense of political influence.

I am not suggesting there will be political influence, but on a strict reading of this legislation, there is clear room for it because all the major decisions are made by Ministers. As I said right at the outset, that is wholly inappropriate as this should be a victim-led process, not a Minister-led process. It is for that reason I say we dispense with the legislation entirely and we resource the coroner properly to enable appropriate investigations to be undertaken, because with this legislation, Ireland is not discharging its obligations under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is not discharging its obligations under various UN treaties it is a state party to, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Unless significant reform, or removal completely, is undertaken, those obligations will not be adhered to. The UN has already commented a number of years ago as far as the Magdalen laundries investigations were concerned and found fault in what happened thereafter. This is an ideal opportunity to put right the wrongs of history.