Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Deputy O'Sullivan said I keep referring to the commission. This legislation is all about a commission. Were the commission to continue the way it was going, it would take another 11 years to finish its work. That is not just a cost factor from the point of view of the State. Many of the people who would need or want to be able to tell anything may not survive the 11 years. The longer the distance the worse the suffering becomes for people. Everybody in the House accepts that if the commission can get as complete a story as possible and as complete a picture as possible over that long period in a shorter timeframe of work that is what we should try to facilitate.

In his contribution Deputy Crowe put his finger on many issues by mentioning some people who would have different perspectives and may not be able to give evidence for different reasons. How could that possibly be stated in criteria? The reasons the Deputy has given may well be the reasons a person may or may not be able to tell a full story. Given that the commission has to get the complete picture it has to hear about the complaints and the experiences. It needs to hear about it for each institution over a number of different decades. It could happen that a group of people who were together at the same time in the same place with the same people are recounting the same experience. There may not be any benefit to the commission in hearing all those people tell their story. What it urgently needs is a person from a different timeframe within the same institution who has been dealing with different experiences to tell his or her story to enable the commission do its work. I have no doubt the commission will be sensitive to the people it is dealing with, recognising what they have been through, in selecting those to go forward.

The commission must have the flexibility to get the information it needs to produce the report it needs to find out the who, the what, the why the where because that is what we are asking it to do. I have not heard anybody say there should not be a process whereby some give the full story. The alternative is to let everybody continue to do it over a long period. That would be far too difficult for the victims and the survivors.

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