Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Government for its acceptance of the motion. I also commend Sinn Féin for tabling it. However, those whom I commend most are the people in the Visitors Gallery, including those who were here earlier when we were dealing with a modern example of the neglect of women and children in the provision of housing. It is a terrible stain not alone on our past but also on our present that the victims of these crimes, in the main, poor women and children, have had to fight to finally get an acknowledgement that a crime was committed against them. The historians and others who have trawled up the truth about what went on deserve great credit. As in the case of the industrial schools, the Magdalen laundries and Bethany Home, it should not have taken that long, bitter struggle for people to get an acknowledgement of the crimes committed against them by the Church and the State. It is not an exaggeration to say some of the things about which we have heard in Tuam and 800 skeletons being found in septic tanks are what one associates with the horrors of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the greatest horror in human history. While what happened here is not quite on a par with it, there are elements that echo it. To think this happened in the early history of the State and continued into the 1970s is appalling.

I was born in a mother and baby home, from where I was adopted. I am a product of this system. I was one of the lucky ones who escaped, but others suffered a terrible faith. Children died of starvation or were used as guinea pigs, while families were ripped apart. It is an appalling stain on our history. It must be said the political establishment of the time colluded in a marriage of convenience with the Catholic Church to do this in order that it could selfishly control and keep down women, children and the poor in the most horrendous of circumstances. The people in the Visitors Gallery and others who are the products of this system deserve full accountability for everything done to them. Most importantly, we must ensure the mistreatment, abuse and neglect of women, children and the poor which continues to the present day is addressed.

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