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

There is no doubt this is an incredibly painful discussion for many people. The horrors of Tuam have opened up wounds. All Members received correspondence from the American wife of a man forcibly adopted from an institution in Ireland to America. He has been searching for his mother for a lifetime. A man in Galway talked about bringing his grandmother to a field where the bodies of her dead twins were buried in a shoebox because an infant who died at birth could not be buried in consecrated ground. This has brought many scars to the surface. I am torn between two reactions. On one hand, I have an almighty sense of relief on behalf of the campaigners for adoption rights in the Adoption Rights Alliance, who crusaded in the wilderness for years and tried to get a hearing on these issues. I welcome that the crimes done to women and children in these institutions are being recognised as crimes. People have campaigned for it for a long time. On the other hand, I find it nauseating to see the hand-wringing of the Taoiseach and hear the talk of shock over the past few weeks. The only shock is that it has taken our society so long to address it. A full report was submitted to the Department last year by the survivors of Sean Ross Abbey, which documented some of the horrors now in the public domain. Hundreds of children were buried there, unmarked and unrecognised. From visits to Tuam made by the health service in the 1940s, we know that it talked about children who were potbellied, fragile, emaciated and with high mortality rates. The State knew about these issues.

In 2002, Brian Lenihan introduced a report by the Department of Health looking at records in institutions. The records are of full archive standard and deal in many instances with mother and baby homes. There was information showing that the Legion of Mary had sought State funding while there were high levels of infant mortality in some of the institutions it dealt with. The information is not new and we can feign shock all we like. There is no doubt the public is genuinely shocked, but what happens next will be decisive. No woman ever left a mother and baby home with a baby. The baby either died in poor circumstances or was given up for adoption, illegally in most instances. It was forced from the woman without the appropriate documentation or support. The issue of survivors and their access to adoption records has now come centre stage.

The Minister will be judged on how the commission of inquiry conducts itself. I am glad that we have one, but it should be conducted outside the State and be fully independent, because we all know the State was responsible for funding many of these organisations and was very happy to allow the Catholic Church to take our young women, hide them behind grey walls, exploit them and discard them and their children to save society the bother of having to deal with them. It must be addressed. The Magdalen issue also needs to be addressed, because the mother and baby homes were a tunnel through which people ended up in Magdalen homes. A full apology, in the style of the apology by the Australian Government, is necessary. I welcome that this is out in the public domain and I hope the inquiry will be genuinely independent. It is what people need.

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