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

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le gach Teachta a ghlac páirt sa diospoireacht seo. Ta súil agam go dtiocfaidh toradh maith as, ach go háirithe dóibh siúd a d'fhulaing sna hinstitiúdí thar blianta fada. I thank all the Deputies who participated in this debate. It was essential that we address these matters promptly and fully in the Dáil and that is why Sinn Féin used its Private Members' time to have the motion debated. I join colleagues in welcoming our special guests in the Visitors Gallery. They are very welcome.

Yesterday, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Charlie Flanagan, announced that the Cabinet had agreed to the establishment of a commission of investigation. We welcome that. It is regrettable that the Minister was not able to stay to the end of the debate and I hope he will return. It is essential now that we set the proper and appropriate terms of reference for the commission of investigation. Its scope needs to be wide enough to cover all the key issues in the scandal of mother and baby homes. At the same time, the terms of reference need to be clear and comprehensive, while making possible a timely conclusion to the work of the investigation.

The commission of investigation must not focus only on the Bon Secours institution in Tuam but on all such mother and baby homes and similar institutions that existed in the State in that era. It is essential there is a full examination of the regimes in those institutions and I will not, from this point forward, refer to them as homes. This must include the manner in which the women were treated - their accommodation, their food, their medical care or lack of it, and the work the women were required to do. It must include also the manner in which the children were treated. It must find out why the infant and child mortality rates were so high in these homes because they were extraordinarily high at a time of high, but gradually falling, infant mortality rates in Irish society generally.

The commission of investigation must investigate the extent of neglect of the children, especially in terms of malnourishment for which there are many indications. It must address the appalling practice of experimentation with vaccines on these children. To what extent were the children used as guinea pigs and to what extent were pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals involved? A key question is the relationship between these institutions and the relevant State authorities of the time. What was the financial relationship and to what extent do records of this relationship still exist? Did religious orders continue to receive payments from the State for deceased children? What of institutions directly under the aegis of the State, through the health boards or their predecessors?

It is important that the Bethany Home is included in this investigation. We addressed that scandal by way of Dáil debate previously and the survivors still do not have the means of finding out the full truth, which they are seeking.

Adoption practices were central to the operation of these places. It is impossible to envisage any comprehensive investigation which does not thoroughly investigate the issue of adoptions - forced, unauthorised and illegal.

Much of the great reservoir of hurt that still remains is among those surviving mothers whose babies were taken from them against their will and without their consent. None of us can imagine the lifelong grief of a woman whose child has been taken from her so cruelly and who has lived with the knowledge that the child is probably alive, but separated from her by an impenetrable wall. Or, just as cruelly, that the child may have died without ever knowing his or her birth mother.

There is the great hurt also of surviving children who have been denied information about their parents, siblings and wider family. The burial practices in these institutions obviously must be central to the work of the commission of investigation. How many children were buried without coffins in unmarked graves? Can all these graves, or most of them, be located and marked? Can the identities of those children be established and their families traced and informed? There is also the scandal of the use of the bodies of dead children from mother and baby institutions for medical research, again, without the consent of their mothers. This too must be examined in the course of the investigation.

In setting the terms of reference, there must be full and honest consultation with all views in this House, particularly with the representative groups and the individuals directly concerned, above all the surviving mothers from these institutions and the children born in or adopted from them. I want to pay special tribute to them for speaking out and seeking the truth and I want to assure them that we all want to see them vindicated. There needs to be a timetable for the commission of investigation and the possible reporting on the different issues on a phased but time-limited basis merits consideration. Above all there should be no ambiguity about the type of commission of investigation being set up.

It must be a statutory commission of investigation, under the Commission of Investigations Act 2004, with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence and to compel the production of documents. Nothing else will do.

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