Ms Terri Harrison:

I will respond to the question on the language used. Our submission refers to "deprived care" because, from what I read in the Bill, no explanation of "early care information" in respect of our children was being sought. My son would not know that I was not totally allowed to provide any such care. That is the reason I included "deprived care". It is essential that people know that my son was locked away in a nursery that was only unlocked four hours every day, that I was to be supervised while feeding him and that, after he was taken from his cot, it took me 22 years to find out if he was alive. All of this reflects on the attitude towards early care information. He was my son and I did not sign an adoption paper. I tried for several years to get information from the Eastern Health Board and Tusla about where the nun took my son to from St. Patrick's on the Navan Road. I know now that she took him back to Bessborough where I had escaped from. How long was he in that locked nursery in Bessborough? Given that information on the care of many of our babies is questionable, why would a Bill say that we had care of them when we did not? I hope that has clarified for the Deputy. For me as a human being and as Niall's mother, I would love to know what happened to my son inside and outside the institution, for example, the strangers who frequented the nursery and the pharmaceutical companies' cluster groups. I know his record after the age of 18 years, but if I looked for information about him or where he was before that age, I was threatened with the Garda. This is all relevant to my son, who has no idea and who has never accessed his records. As his mother of the time and as his mother now, I wish to know legally what they did to my baby boy when they had him in the same institution as me and when they took him from one institution to another before he went out to the people they chose to be his parents.