Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I apologise if the Minister did not say he brought a proposal to Cabinet. I heard him talking about the issue on the radio so he certainly brought the proposal to the national airwaves. I spoke on the radio after the Minister and asked what he will do if we have two reports, one of which states there is no evidence of illegal adoption or incarceration, all of the things we know happened, and another report from an independent person who examined the report through a human rights lens, which would likely find there is evidence that all those illegalities and crimes occurred in those institutions. Everybody knows those things happened anyway. I believe the Minister went on the radio that day in good faith because he thought there should be an independent review because, like all of us, he recognises that need. The Minister said that key to changing his mind was his engagement with survivors who told him their main issue is that their experiences are not recognised enough, which can be addressed through the national archives, or another means. This is the committee for the Department and the members of this committee can tell the Minister that is not the only concern people have. They also want justice. The findings of those reports being so fundamentally flawed has a profound impact outside of experiences not being documented. That is important but there are also issues in respect of redress. It is not fair to just pick one issue that was important to people and scrap the plan to provide them with justice and acknowledge that what they went through was horrific. That is what is missing. The Minister is unilaterally deciding what is best because of some engagements he had. What about what the committee has to say about the issue? We have spent a lot of time engaging with people about this particular issue. It is not fair.

I do not mean to trivialise the situation by explaining this but if the situations that occurred in mother and baby homes now happened in a home or another State-run institution, the normal processes of justice and laws would pertain. There would be accountability, justice and all of those things that have always been denied to people who were in those institutions. This whole process, which has gone on for the past two years, has been a longwinded way of doing that again. People, including the Minister, wanted an independent review. He knows it was for reasons other than just recognising the experiences of survivors. Of course, that is an important part of justice. Will the Minister at least acknowledge that he understood it was about more than that? Perhaps his mind has changed because other State actors have shut down his proposals. We need to know what is happening because this is just another chapter in a very long tale of denying people basic and fundamental principles of justice in this democratic country.