Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

From listening to the debate both inside and outside the House, it is very clear anger is growing in the country, not just about this but about the terrible things that have happened to women and children down through the ages. Tonight, we are particularly looking at the revelations and news we have heard in regard to mother and baby homes. Young women were forcibly separated first from their communities, then from any sense of pride or self worth and then from their babies. Their babies were neglected and starved, with illnesses untreated. They were seen as worthless and buried, ultimately, in unmarked graves, left in the end without even an identity.

We know that this happened as a manifestation of official policy. Young women were separated and confined in what can only be described as prisons in order to enforce a stigma of shame. They were declared to be unequal and treated accordingly.

We hope we have changed - of course, we do. However, what of the children's referendum that was passed almost two years ago and is still not signed into law? If it was a fiscal referendum, would we still be waiting for it to be signed into law? What of the children in direct provision? Are they to be the next scandal visited upon us? What of the child death inquiries of the children in care, where over 230 children died in State care? Alcohol was seen as one of the top risk factors in all of those cases, yet we fail to regulate and examine the problem this country has with alcohol.

This commission must be the one that puts an end to commissions of inquiry which solely examine, let us be honest, why women were treated as second class citizens because of their biology. By that, I mean the women in the Magdalen laundries, the women who suffered symphysiotomy, the hepatitis C women, Savita and the women in the mother and baby homes. It is shameful that this country has sought, and to this day seeks, to treat women as second class citizens. This commission must be the one to end inquiries into our shameful past. I hope we will be able, in the lifetime of this Government, to shine a light on those very dark and shameful episodes that have happened in the past but also in our very recent past. We must act to protect women and children.

I hope those who have records will come forward and that we will not have people who will withhold evidence. We must have co-operation from all of those engaged in this horrific part of our history. What we are talking about here are very young, poor women and sometimes girls who were treated as unequal, as second class citizens and as prisoners because of their biology. We must make sure this commission seeks not just to investigate the mother and baby homes but also the tangled web this State, the church and society pushed women and children through because they did not want to see what was going on in front of them.

The word "outcast" derives from medieval times. When young girls and women became pregnant and were unmarried, they were asked to leave the village and live outside it because they were a burden and could not be fed or looked after. They often died in the woods because of malnutrition and exposure. That was in medieval times and "outcast" was a medieval term, yet in modern times and in modern terms, women, because of their biology, are treated as second class citizens.

I commend the first steps we have taken as a Government in regard to the establishment of the commission but we must get this right. We must make sure this commission is the commission to end inquiries into why we treat women and have treated women in this country as second class citizens because of their biology.

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