Ms Anna Corrigan:

I will make a quick point about the issue of criminality. I have two open police inquiries. One of my brothers is a stated missing person, having been reported as such to the Garda since 2013. He is marked as dead in the home's ledgers but has no death certificate. There is no medical certification of death and no reason for his death is given. In fact, none of the children has a medical certification of death. My other brother is another open case. Both of their cases are in Tuam. His case was reported to my local gardaí in 2014. Given the evidence that I have, I contend that he did not die of measles, but of neglect and malnutrition, because he deteriorated from being normal and healthy to emaciated with a voracious appetite at 13 months.

Where will the Bill leave me in terms of agencies and criminality? I am a citizen of the State who is looking for my rights under the laws of the land. As such, the Bill has to be applicable to these two open police cases. It just so happens to be that the two children in question were victims of the Tuam home, which fell under the remit of the commission. When I applied to seek my rights as a citizen, I was blocked and told by the Garda that it was dealing with the commission. I told gardaí that I was not dealing with the commission and that I was a citizen of this State. I sought three exhumation licences for my brothers, but I was refused on all counts.

It puts me in a strange place. The Garda has failed to act. It was a criminal site. Independent people came in, excavated it and exhumed bones.

Parts of my brothers possibly lie somewhere in somebody's filing cabinet. I do not know where they are because nobody has reported back. The Garda cannot follow through because it is deferring to the commission. Again, has the site been contaminated if there is to be investigation of possible criminality? It is just a conundrum I am kind of caught in. I did not really get an answer on how the bones were originally taken for carbon dating and whether DNA was extracted.

There was mention of a liaison. I have reported a missing person and I am entitled to a Garda liaison officer but I have not been appointed one. Neither has anybody in our group. Everything happening around all of this is a blatant trampling of our human rights in the same vein as what happened to our families. We have never been afforded any acknowledgement of them, despite the report written by Dr. Geoffrey Shannon on our human rights.