Dr. Sarah-Anne Buckley:

In 2094, and I cannot really comprehend how far away that is, we will lose the history of education in Ireland, the history of religious orders in Ireland, much from women's history, the history of childhood and the history of youth. We will lose a great deal on the history of social class, as many of those who were sent to the industrial schools were sent because of poverty. In many ways, we will lose the history of the transition from pre-independent Ireland to independent Ireland. The industrial schools were part of the prison system but were then transferred to education. That is really relevant. I was reminded today that the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, spoke of how we need to include our dark history as part of the junior certificate curriculum. How can we include this? How can I, as a researcher, do that when there are huge gaps of administrative records missing to me? Even today, there are many misunderstandings of what the different institutions did and why they were set up. The media often confuses Magdalen laundries with industrial schools. We need more history, not less history. We are very able to do this work. We are people who have PhD qualifications or are trained as archivists. The Oireachtas needs to approach the experts in different fields and ask their advice on this. There needs to be more consultation and more history.