Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to begin by commending the Bethany Home survivors and campaigners who have worked hard for years to highlight the grave injustice to the women and children who were held there between 1922 and 1972. I commend in particular Derek Leinster and Niall Meehan who have done a huge amount to give the survivors and the deceased a voice, to carry out detailed research on what really occurred in the Bethany Home, and to raise public and official awareness. It is sad when so much progress has been made in seeking recognition, apology and redress for other survivors of punitive institutions in this State, that so little progress has been made with regard to the survivors and the deceased of the Bethany Home.

I raised this issue repeatedly in the last Dáil, including directly with the previous Taoiseach. Some who are now on the Government benches were, at that time, highly critical of the failure to recognise Bethany for what it was. I regret to say that now they are repeating the mantra of the last government and in no greater or more direct way than in the contribution we heard last night from the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch. I am particularly disappointed by the thoroughly negative and insulting contribution of the Minister of State, who replied on behalf of the Government.

For our part, Sinn Féin did not approach this serious mater with any spirit of party political discord. On the contrary, we tabled a modest motion that sought to reopen the debate, rekindle public and political awareness, and make progress on behalf of the small number of surviving men and women of the Bethany Home. This motion should command all-party support across the Dáil. If Government voices do not want to divide the House tonight, they should withdraw the amendment and support the substantive motion tabled by Sinn Féin. The Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, chose to reject the motion. She tabled a paltry amendment and threw party political insults across the Chamber. It does her and this Government no credit but we will not allow such an approach to divert us.

In a letter in December 2010, Derek Leinster acknowledged those in the Oireachtas who had, up to that time, raised the case of the Bethany Home. These included the then Deputy Kathleen Lynch, my colleague Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh and myself. We were substantive voices on this issue going back a long number of years. Putting the case in context, Derek Leinster stated:

Ireland has moved from stigmatising certain groups, such as unmarried mothers and their "illegitimate" children, to general indifference toward marginalised children. This links the eras of religious and secular unconcern toward the vulnerable. In each era the State had or has a responsibility. This responsibility to former residents of the Bethany children and of Magdalen institutions has yet to be acknowledged through some form of redress. Though one institution was Protestant and the other Roman Catholic, the State facilitated a sectarian social care system that it then failed to regulate in the interests of residents. That is where injustice lies.

Today, at the end of 2013, that injustice has still not been addressed by the State. Children in the Bethany Home suffered disgraceful neglect and mistreatment and the State authorities knew about it. Children fostered out from the Bethany Home also suffered terrible treatment and the State knew about that as well.

We need only look at the statistics for the deaths of children in Bethany Home.

Between 1922 and 1949, 219 Bethany Home children died. These same children currently lie in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin. Of the 219 dead children 175 were aged between four weeks and two years, 25 were aged from a number of hours up to four weeks and 19 were stillborn. Cemetery records indicate that the causes of death included 54 from convulsions, 41 from heart failure, 26 from starvation and seven from pneumonia. These stark and shocking figures speak for themselves.

I urge the Government to withdraw its amendment, to accept the motion as tabled and let us move forward together on an all-party basis to see justice finally done for the Bethany Home survivors and in memory of the deceased.

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