Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the presence of the Minister in the House.

This proposed commission of inquiry is yet another investigation into a dark era of abuse of children in Ireland, an investigation into the destroyed lives of both mothers and their babies, and, of course, an investigation into lives cut short, some having spent only a short time on this earth.

There are many aspects to this. There are two that I want to focus on, and provision is made in the terms of reference before us for both of those. The first relates to county homes. I am glad to see provision for county homes is included. The terms of reference state that in some county homes mother and baby services seem to have been a considerable focus of the operation. I also want to draw the Minister's attention to some of the other county homes which were never designated as mother and baby homes but acted as such. Roscommon county home was one of those. For example, to give an idea of the figures involved, on 31 March 1941 Roscommon county home had 18 unmarried mothers, which would be proportionate on a population basis to the other much larger homes across the State.These homes were obliged to admit anyone who would otherwise be homeless, and because of the stigma attached to unmarried mothers, many of their parents committed them to county homes. I understand that in 1962 there were approximately a dozen young women residing in Roscommon county home. They worked unpaid in the laundry and in the kitchen, and their children, if of school age, attended the local primary schools. While all of the children in that particular home left in the early 1960s, their mothers remained as virtual prisoners, rarely leaving the premises, because they had become institutionalised. The regime in that home, as in every other home across the country, was harsh. In one story that is told locally, a young woman pleaded desperately with the caretaker of the county home to let her out, and after he acceded to her request and let her out at night, he lost his job. We must publicly acknowledge that these homes acted effectively as mother and baby homes, and while they may not have such formal designation, they provided similar services to those provided in the other official mother and baby homes. Sadly, we must acknowledge that some of the mothers and some of the babies never left those homes throughout their lives, whether long or short, after their admission. That should be included in the consideration by this commission.

The other issue I want to raise, referenced in Article (1)V of the terms of reference of the commission, is that of vaccine trials, or, in plain English, the use of residents in these facilities as human guinea pigs. A series of separate trials were carried out on children in these homes. Previously, I raised in this House the issue of the trials that took place between 1960 and 1961, and two others that took place in the early 1970s, which continued up to 1976. According to recent research, it seems that there were earlier trials in the 1930s and there may have been later trials than the ones of which we are aware to date. These children were seen as an accessible group for whom consent was not an issue. Some were used in more than one trial. For example, it is reported that Ms Mari Steed, who is now based in the United States and who was born at Bessborough in 1960, was used in four separate vaccine trials. These children were treated as if they were little more than laboratory rats, and that is unacceptable. The trials were performed with the knowledge, if not the approval, of official Ireland, including the medical and scientific community, because a report on the 1960-61 trial, which involved 58 infants in institutions dotted around the State, was published in the British Medical Journalin 1962.

The background to the subsequent clinical trials that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the great upsurge at the time in the number of severe adverse reactions in children who received the three-in-one DPT vaccine manufactured by Wellcome. The 1973 vaccine trial involved an institution and a comparative control group outside that institution. A total of 116 children were involved, comprising 59 from the community and 57 from two children's homes in the Dublin area. The children in the community were given the normal commercial vaccine and those who were used as guinea pigs were given the new trial vaccine that was being studied at the time. As the Minister will be aware, these children were used to test out vaccines because during the late 1960s and 1970s there was a significant increase in the number of adverse reactions to the whooping cough vaccine. A former Minister for Health admitted while in office that the side effects generally recognised as occurring occasionally following the administration of the whooping cough vaccine included mental retardation and paralysis. These trials, which took place in 1973, were approved by the National Drugs Advisory Board and a licence was issued to Wellcome for a two-year period, yet these trials were still ongoing in 1976.

The trials raise a number of questions which remain unanswered. How many vaccine trials in total were conducted? What concoction did these children receive? Why was it always the case that the children in the institutions received the experimental vaccine while the children in the community received the control vaccine? Were children in care used in the trials and what consent was given for this? What, if any, are the long-term medical effects of the trials on the children who participated? Why has the State refused to investigate the contents of the files that were handed over to the Laffoy commission by the religious orders, State agencies and Wellcome? Why were those files handed back to those organisations rather than retained to ensure such information was controlled by the State? As the Minister will be aware, this particular issue was to be investigated by the Laffoy commission but, because of a court challenge, that did not happen and that module never progressed.

The documents were handed back to the original owners in 2012. Could the Minister assure the House that the records that were handed back in 2012 can be sourced again, collated and made available to the inquiry in order that we can, once and for all, get answers to questions that should have been answered a long time ago? The children, now adults, should have had access to the records a long time ago.

I wish to highlight a story told to me by a constituent who approached me last week and asked me whether I would be contributing to the debate. She went to the mother and baby home in Bessborough in Cork. Her three month old daughter became seriously ill in Bessborough and was transferred to hospital. Soon after that she was sent home with no information as to where her daughter was. On her return home she tried to get information from the home on the whereabouts of her daughter but she got no assistance. Eventually she made contact with St. Finbarr’s Hospital in Cork and was told that the baby had been transferred to Crumlin hospital. When she got through to Crumlin hospital she was told that her baby had a very serious heart condition, that it had passed away and had been buried in a plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. It took her years to trace the burial plot in Glasnevin Cemetery but she regularly visits the grave. In her case she has a particular plot to go to.

The story clearly shows that even when the babies were not adopted and there was a clear answer as to what happened to the baby, the information was not disclosed to the mothers. They did not have an opportunity to grieve. Information and the truth are vitally important to those mothers and to all of the children.

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