Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Táim fíor bhuíoch as ucht an deis labhairt. This is a difficult topic for any of us to make a contribution because it is associated with painful, traumatic and heart-rending stories that we have heard through the modern day media doing their best to give us a feel for what it was like for the people caught up in this but, at the end of day, all most of us can do is try to imagine and understand. A commission that tries to get to the bottom of what went on and tries to make right some of the wrongs that were perpetrated will have an incredibly challenging time. From the bottom of my heart, I wish the commission the best of success and I wish the Minister and the Department in their guidance and stewardship of the commission heartfelt good wishes as well with what will be a difficult and traumatic story to be told by many people.

I have limited knowledge of what happened, although I have had the great good fortune, honour and privilege of working with children in the care of the State. That has given me some understanding of the difficulties faced by children who struggle with their identity and sense of belonging when they become adults and have questions about this. It is a difficult and challenging road for them to navigate. While what happened in the homes is examined, these questions need to be answered more than anything else to assist people to repair relationships and bring them together.

I remain haunted by a story I heard. A friend of my dad's was in our home and he talked about a neighbour of his when he was a young boy who walked around the yard repeatedly. This young woman had a heavy sack of potatoes on her back and she walked around in circles for days on end. The man recounted how as young men they wondered what this was about. It was only in later years that they learned that this poor, unfortunate young woman was pregnant and this was her attempt to rid herself of what she considered to be the cancer in her body. That is how society taught that young woman and her extended family to react to probably one the greatest and most exciting and brilliant times in people's lives when they discover they are pregnant and will create a life. This poor individual did not live in a society that was accepting of a young woman being pregnant outside of wedlock and fear was the dominant and prevailing emotion that she and her extended family experienced at the time. The reason I recount this is she entered one of the homes subsequently.

With regard to the issue of the mortality rate in the homes, I do not apportion blame but we need to review all the circumstances in the context of the time they occurred. Having tried to inflict maximum physical damage on her body to end the pregnancy, this poor individual entered a home and lost the baby. There were many compounding factors for the loss of the baby. Society should take the largest share of the blame but it is not for me to play judge and jury in hindsight. We need to look at the events of the past but we also need to be careful not to do so through the prism of today's attitudes because we need to be cognisant of the shameful attitudes in times past.

The best gift we could give to the commission is all of us as a society acknowledging our shameful past and contribution to these individuals' lives and ensuring we do our bit today to challenge society on issues of inclusiveness and acceptance while questioning attitudes along the way.

This is something for all of us to take into the future. From my heart, I wish this commission the very best. It is an extraordinary challenge and I know there are many aspects of it that people are not happy with - that it is not covering enough and is not reaching out to enough people. It is, however, a start that is welcome and I hope it will serve to ease the pain carried every day by mothers separated from their children. I hope the results of this commission will go some way towards addressing that.

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