Ms Alice Coughlan:

I will say just one thing. If a gardener came into your house tomorrow, dug up the garden and three bodies were found, the Garda would be called in immediately. If you owned four more properties outside of that house, gardaí would be there within ten minutes digging everything up. They were able to be at a GAA field yesterday excavating and exhuming a 300-year old body. We know these bodies are in there in these cases. Let us bring this issue down to simple things. We actually know these bodies are buried in a pit in Tuam. The point I make then, and even if this means we must get a separate Bill, is that we need to get these bodies out of the ground now. When we talk about Bessborough, we know there are 900 bodies there. As I said before, most institutions followed the same routine. We can work on that aspect.

The thing is, however, the archaeologist involved in 2017 said these bodies should be taken up within six months. Here we are four years later and we are still discussing it. We are listening. I reiterate that I am not a facilitator or a lawyer and I am not whatever. What I am saying is there are these bodies in Tuam that we know about. Therefore, they should be excavated and exhumed immediately.