Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We need to get to the bottom of all these issues. In the early decades of this State, attitudes towards women, particularly unmarried women, and to the most vulnerable in our society revealed again and again a shocking litany of disregard for citizens. This Government was the first, after decades, to deal with the case of the Magdalen laundry women, and I am proud of our record in addressing it. We will address this issue, too. We will address it in a comprehensive way, because it is not, as the Deputy rightly says, confined to Tuam. We need to scope out exactly what questions must be answered. We are working at this time on the records; there has been no excavation and we do not yet know what is in those graves in Tuam. We need to scope out, in a comprehensive way, what exactly needs to be examined, and that is what the interdepartmental group is doing. Its report will come to Government in a matter of weeks. It has taken decades for our country to get to the level of maturity where we look back now in shock at what happened in the past. We will have to reveal the truth about those dark days with clarity and purpose, and that is what the Government will do.

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