Ms Catriona Crowe:

I thank the committee for inviting me to come here today to talk about this very important matter. I know legislators are incredibly busy people, but it would be nice to see a few more members of the committee here. This is very important legislation with significant implications. I am talking to the committee after members have had the privilege of listening to four survivors of the events described in the records that are proposed to be locked up. Members have heard their dignified, respectful, compelling and deeply moving testimony. It is right that they were the first people to testify to the committee this morning. I will now read my opening statement.

I refer members to the longer statement already circulated to the committee for fuller information on the points I am going to make. The Retention of Records Bill proposes to withhold from public inspection for 75 years certain State records dealing with the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse, the Ryan commission. The National Archives Act 1986 has served the country perfectly well since its passage as regards the withholding of records from public inspection. The section of the Act that provides for this allows for officers of Departments, with the consent of the Department of the Taoiseach, to certify that the release of departmental records that are over 30 years old would in certain circumstances be contrary to the public interest, or would or might constitute a breach of statutory duty or a breach of good faith on the ground that they contain information supplied in confidence, or would or might cause distress or danger to living persons.

Why that is not seen as adequate protection by the proposers of this Bill in unclear. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Skills in 2015 recommended the use of the National Archives Act, but the Minister turned it down on unspecified grounds. To put it succinctly, this is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and it begs the question of why it seems to be required to create an entirely new set of archival legislation when we already have a perfectly good Act in existence that covers the case.

The committee has heard the survivors tell it what their wishes are. The only serious attempt to ascertain the wishes of survivors, commissioned by the Department of Education and Skills, is a recent research study that consulted 100 of those who had made submissions to the redress bodies to ascertain their views on the fate of the records, and which resulted in a majority expressing concern at the proposed sealing of the records. Those who made submissions to the various inquiries should be given copies of their submissions. This is a glaring gap in both respect for survivors and normal best practice when people are giving testimony to any inquiry. They should get copies of their own submissions. Why they have not, nobody has properly explained. The same should apply to other commissions of inquiry of this sort, particularly the mother and baby homes commission, which is currently in session.

Administrative records tell us how these organisations worked. They are currently held in the archives of the Ryan commission, the McAleese committee and the Murphy mother and baby homes commission, and they should be available when they are more than 30 - soon to be 20 - years old. There are no privacy issues with these records. It would set an extraordinary precedent if this Bill made it possible for the State, wrongly, to close important archives when it so chooses without recourse to the National Archives Act.

I have six basic recommendations to make to the committee. First, there would seem to be no good reason not to use the provisions of existing legislation to preserve, withhold and make accessible these very important records. Second, information on the desires of those who gave testimony to the Ryan commission and the McAleese committee, and who are currently giving testimony to the mother and baby homes commission, should be gathered to ascertain what they would wish to happen to the records. Third, copies of submissions made to these bodies should be given to those who made them. Fourth, administrative records of these bodies should be subject only to the provisions of the National Archives Act and not swept up in this ill-considered attempt to bypass its provisions. Fifth, a quote for digitisation and redaction of the records should be sought from a reputable IT company, given this is a huge part of the history of our country and these are ways of dealing with sensitive records that would allow scholars to see them, for example. Beyond a statement from the Minister that it would be prohibitively expensive to do this, we have no other information, so we should find out what it might cost. Sixth, the elephant in the room is that the records of religious congregations who ran the institutions should be brought under the aegis of the State, either through the National Archives Act or through the establishment of a State-run religious records repository. Ireland has the opportunity, after these very traumatic events and commissions, to lead the world in terms of preservation and access to records. However, we cannot do that without the State grasping the nettle of requiring the religious orders to give up their records of these institutions. I thank committee members for their attention.