Anne Ferris (Wicklow, Labour) | Oireachtas source

A few months ago I was invited to an artistic event in a building next door to the Clarence Hotel on Wellington Quay. Let me tell the House there could not possibly be two more contrasting perspectives on Irish life than the interior of those two adjoining city centre buildings. The art installation beside U2's hotel was called Forsaken and was inspired by the lives of tens of thousands of women and children abandoned behind the walls of Ireland's church and State-run institutions, babies and mothers who were buried secretly and meaninglessly in unmarked graves, adopted children whose identities were stolen and lost for their entire lifetimes, and vulnerable people who were offered no protection against great injustices. The message in the art is that each and every one of these people deserves recognition of their person and recognition of the wrongs done to them. I share this viewpoint.

While other countries manage to confront and address their terrible histories, we in Ireland continue to hide from the full extent of the darker parts of our past. Germany is taking every opportunity to shine bright lights into the darker corners of its Nazi past and Australia has faced up to the wrongs inflicted on that nation's stolen Aboriginal children. I am saddened that our modern and otherwise progressive Irish State has not reached the level of self-awareness necessary to confront the past as it should be confronted.

Appendix 1 of the terms of reference defines just 14 named institutions and a representative sample of county homes to be afforded the full scope of inquiry. There is no guarantee that a former child resident of an orphanage or a mother who worked in a laundry under threat of hunger and violence and without pay will get the opportunity to tell their story to anyone. This is not only deeply wrong, it is short-sighted. How did some so-called mother and baby homes make the favoured list and others did not? There seems to be a fundamental problem of consistency in the selection criteria used. We have been told that only those institutions having a certain self-professed ethos have been listed. Am I the only one to spot a difficulty with selecting institutions for investigation based on their own self-professed ethos? At least one institution on the privileged list of 14 does not seem to meet the stated requirements of the Minister's selection criteria if its own website material is to be believed. Based on the facts in my knowledge I can see little difference between the operation of Miss Carr's institution, which is on the list, and the Westbank home, which is not. Both institutions accepted a small proportion of mothers, no more than eight at a time, into what historically had been an orphanage. The lack of objectivity in the selection of institutions undermines this inquiry from the get go.

When faced yesterday with the constitutional implication of prioritising single women over married women, the Minister correctly withdrew support for the indefensible. This was a small win and I am glad I pushed for it. Will it have much effect? It probably will not. In my own case I can have very little evidence to offer on my short few days as an infant in one of these homes and my mother and adoptive parents are now dead. The simple fact is that for the most part of the duration of the scandal there are few or no remaining adult witnesses in the categories of institutions prioritised by these narrow terms of reference.

The inquiry as structured may well result in recommendations for more inquiries down the line, but this would be too late to properly involve many of the very elderly former residents who could add real value to a real process now. Just before I left the Forsaken exhibition, one of the artists very kindly asked me to put my first-born daughter's name to one of the hundreds of tiny hand-sewn baby dresses that formed part of the display. It was a beautiful idea, but even after all these years I could not bring myself to share the baby name of the little girl who was taken from me. Instead I put my own name on the dress.

This inquiry process requires great sensitivity, an open door and a listening ear for all the witnesses to this dark corner of Ireland's past, regardless of the title above the door of the institution where they once lived. The sorrow and cruelty was equally real to all involved. As legislators we cannot and should not discriminate, and sadly I cannot put my name to this proposal.

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