Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The report which the Minister's Department has had for almost a year concluded by referring to the children who died, who had never had a name, a birth certificate, a death certificate or a baptism. It concluded that the adoption regime in Ireland was directly responsible for and guilty of the most truly evil crimes against humanity, a slaughter of innocence, a war waged against pregnant girls as young as 12 years of age, including the victims of rape and incest and their babies. It states that if these cold facts do not warrant a public inquiry, what does? The Minister's Department did not carry out a public inquiry. I have raised this issue many times in this House and nobody really wanted to know about them when the facts were known and made available. If we are serious about learning the lesson, that wrong must be acknowledged first.

The State was quite happy to banish pregnant girls, who had the cheek to get pregnant outside marriage, and their babies and make them disappear. The religious ran the institutions and an adoption racket was carried out by this State with the religious orders involved. What we need for closure on this is a full acknowledgment by the State of its role, the holding of those responsible accountable for their actions, compensation, and particularly a handing over of the records and the addresses of the missing identities of thousands of Irish children, many of them adults now, with their history stolen because of an institutional discrimination against women and their children. Dealing with the rights of those people who were illegally adopted has been ignored far too long and is at the centre of this issue also.

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