Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are times in politics when it is difficult to know what to say, we go past disappointment, frustration and anger and we are reminded what we have allowed to happen in the name of religion or morality and society. This is one such occasion. I am glad the Government has agreed to move quickly on this issue. It would be entirely unseemly for any of us to use this as a political football.

Like Deputies who have already contributed on this motion, others will speak tomorrow about the awful treatment of women whose only "crime" was to become pregnant and of children whose only "crime" was to have been born out of wedlock. Members will speak of how pregnant girls and women were kidnapped by a coalition of church, State and, in some cases, families and local communities to be hidden behind the high, cold and forbidding walls of so-called mother and children homes, which were prisons by any other name. Some Deputies will speak of the fact that children were taken by force from their mothers and sent abroad for adoption never to make contact again, of how they were used as guinea pigs to test experimental drugs or of how they were segregated as second, third or non-class people to be shunned by wider society. Some will speak of the high death rate of children in those detention centres and of how the bodies of some such children were dumped without a prayer, a hug or a tear in unmarked graves on unconsecrated ground.

How could we have stood silently by when this was happening?

We are not talking about something that happened 100 years ago. This is comparatively recent history. Why did we not believe those few courageous people and organisations who have been shouting from the rooftops for years that this has been going on? Are there remaining dark places in Ireland into which we need to shine a light?

I am probably angry and frustrated with myself as well as with the church, Government organisations and all those who kept silent while all this was going on. I should have listened more closely to people who said these things were happening in Ireland. I should have challenged church leaders who preached Christian rules and regulations but appeared to practise disdain, or even hatred, for vulnerable children and women. I should have called daily for local and national Government and their agents to look up from their books of Estimates, regulations and rules and into the eyes of those they were so grievously damaging but I did not, or at least I did not shout often enough or for long enough.

Are there dark corners in today's Ireland in our prisons, our immigrant reception centre or in family homes that do not have the resources or the supports to enable them rear children capable of achieving the best quality of life? Are we listening to or ignoring the voices of those who say there are families in deep distress today?

I believe that until we have minimum standards and conditions listed as fundamental, inalienable rights and we open our ears and our hearts to those who unsettle us by their message, until we have those two conditions in place, we cannot say that this will never happen again.

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