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

I am sharing time with Deputy McDonald.

I welcome the Government's announcement earlier today and we await the full details on the terms of reference of the statutory commission of investigation announced by the Minister and discussed in the House this afternoon by the Taoiseach. It is a dreadful fact that women and children placed by the State under the so-called care of religious orders and other church institutions in this country between the 1920s and 1970s were treated as outcasts and non-people. We have also been exposed to the dreadful fact that these institutions were effectively places of imprisonment for pregnant women, with many facing the loss of their child through forced adoptions, including the sale of babies by these religious orders, particularly to wealthy Irish-American families. However, the latest revelations from Tuam have highlighted more horrifying aspects of the regimes in these mother and baby homes and they demand immediate action to uncover the full truth. Foremost in our thoughts should be the surviving mothers who endured what was, in reality, their incarceration in these institutions and the surviving adopted children who wish to find out the truth about the identity of their parents, siblings and wider families, if they have any.

Great credit us due to an ordinary Irish citizen, Catherine Corless, who painstakingly researched the Bon Secours mother and baby home in her native town of Tuam, County Galway. She has pursued this for the past number of years and in 2013 her research revealed the scale of children's deaths and burials at the home. Between 1925 and 1961, 796 children died in the Bon Secours mother and baby home. Their names are recorded and were accessed by Catherine Corless in the births and deaths registry in Galway. What has brought this story to national and international attention is the manner of the children's burial - anonymously, without any type of individual identification or markers and apparently in a mass grave. It has caused widespread revulsion and has re-opened and highlighted anew the scandal of mother and baby homes in this State.

We know from the research so far that 796 children died in Tuam between 1925 and 1961. In 1933, of 120 admissions to Tuam, 42 babies died. That is a shocking 35% mortality rate. The rate in Bessborough was 39%, in Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea it was 37.5% and in Pelletstown in Dublin it was 34%.

At one stage, the death rate at Bessborough reached 61%. Between 1922 and 1949, 219 children died in the Protestant-run Bethany Home in Dublin. Of these, 175 were aged between four weeks and two years. A further 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 are shocking facts and I have no doubt that the commission of inquiry to be established will bring forward even more shocking ones. As a people, we must face up to that. We must face up to the wrongs of the past and the reasons these dreadful things happened.

I conclude my contribution to these statements, same to be followed shortly by the substantive debate that will focus on the key arguments for action incorporated in Sinn Féin's Private Members' motion, by adding my voice to the Minister's appeal to all who have relevant information, documentation or memories of these dreadful years in these institutions that would assist the commission of inquiry in the carrying out of its remit to co-operate fully, come forward and share what they have and what they know. I emphasise that this must be a process that will definitively address the terrible years, experiences and great wrongs that have been done to all the women and children who have suffered so much in these dreadful places.

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