Ms Alice Coughlan:

To me, the main thing is that if a child wishes to meet a parent, there should be respect on both sides. If a child grows up - most of our children would be adults - and decides he or she does not wish to see his or her parent, that is his or her choice. If a mother decides or she has not told her family or whatever the case may be and does not wish to have contact, both sides should be respected. Both sides should have to see a psychologist regardless and actually sit down with somebody to try to go through what is going around in their heads. There is nobody in a mother and baby institution who was not affected emotionally - in other words, destroyed emotionally. It genuinely needs somebody who is able to get through to the mother or to the child. The child maybe has this thing in his or her head. Basically, we do not know how many children were told lies that their mother did this or did not want them. We do not know how many children grew up thinking their parents or mother did not want them. How many were a case of rape? How many were a case of incest? There are so many angles and so many issues, therefore, respect is needed on both sides, that is, respect for the adopted person and respect for the mothers of the babies.

Again, this idea of somebody writing one's letter is just incomprehensible. It is just unbelievable that anyone would actually believe that somebody like a nun could actually write what happened to a person or about what way they were in those circumstances. As I said, the big thing that gets me more than anything are half-truths. They can just put something in that is a half-truth and, therefore, it can be made somewhat believable. I will go back to Yvonne Murphy, the judge who turned around and asked one nun about the 38 babies. That nun did not remember one death that occurred in her first year in the convent and yet Judge Murphy could tell her there were 38 deaths that year, and those were registered deaths. We got this from the commission. That is proof. There were 38 registered deaths.