Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge all of those women, children and men who are survivors, advocates and campaigners, some of whom are with us in the Visitors Gallery, most of whom are not. They have brought us to this point and at long last the Government has finally agreed to establish an independent commission of investigation into mother and baby homes. It is welcome that the commission will have the remit to receive testimony directly from victims and survivors in private or in public, the necessary powers to compel witnesses and documents and to recommend prosecutions in the event of obstruction, and the freedom to produce a report including such recommendations as it sees fit. These are all welcome, but it is not enough to do the right thing on a superficial level. The right thing must also be done in the right way.

It is not for the Opposition or for me to congratulate the Government on its late conversion to the need for this commission of investigation. That it can and has done itself. Rather, it is for us to represent the concerns of citizens who are not present on the floor of the Chamber, the victims and survivors of serious and widespread human rights violations for which the State bears at least partial and, in any event, ultimate responsibility. Other Deputies have focused on the positive aspects of what the Government has brought forward. I will, therefore, use my time to focus on the many outstanding concerns.

The political backdrop to this debate is decades of official denial and the stubborn refusal of successive administrations to take this issue seriously despite available evidence. This has been due to the inexcusable lack of determination and even outright refusal by a series of Ministers, including some former Ministers who have served in this very Administration, to do the right thing in the right way despite the repeated pleas of victims and survivors.

The legal backdrop to this debate, and to considering the adequacy of the proposed provisions under the terms of reference contained in the ministerial order which we seek to amend, is the recent strong criticism of Ireland at the United Nations last year. This commission must be established and conducted in accordance with accepted international standards and Ireland's obligations under international human rights law. It must not bear any resemblance to previous wholly inadequate and tokenistic processes, such as the widely discredited McAleese committee, which helped bring Ireland's human rights record into disrepute.

It most emphatically cannot end with a craven secret indemnity deal such as that brokered previously with the religious orders by an outgoing Fianna Fáil Minister actively seeking to shelter them from the full extent of their liability for institutional abuse of children.

However, most important is the real human backdrop to this debate, that is, the life experiences of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens, both living and dead, some of whose deaths we now know were unforgivable, untimely, preventable, in many cases due to official neglect, and in an as yet unknown number of cases were compounded by deprivation of even the dignity of a decent burial. Some of these life experiences are so harrowing they are barely imaginable to thoseof us who have not lived them. They include the perverse and malicious cruelty of deliberately depriving a child of his or her mother's care, against her will, by forcing the mother to give up her baby as a punishment for her unmarried status. These women and children were systematically stripped of their very identities as unique and valued individuals, and as human persons with equal rights. The women were reduced to house names and numbers. Their babies' original identities were stolen and hidden behind new names and case numbers, with some only discovering their real birth names as adults in their 50s and 60s. In addition to their varying individual experiences of malnourishment, medical neglect, psychological and verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, forced labour, medical experimentation, human trafficking and undignified burial, all of these victims in common were deliberately deprived of the right to family life with their biological children or with their biological mothers, siblings and extended families. Moreover, all who went through this system of interlocking institutions deliberately designed to subjugate them were callously stripped of their self-esteem and self-worth, and forced to endure a lifetime of stigma that these institutions imposed on them by virtue of their status as an unmarried mother, or as a child born outside wedlock.

My welcome for this commission is strongly qualified. I consider it to be, in crucial ways, a missed opportunity to finally make things right for all these fellow citizens, our equals. It was a chance for this House to make an honest collective pledge that no victim would be left behind by this process. It was a chance to take a rights-based approach by directing the inclusion of all victims and survivors through proactive notification, by guaranteeing the right to public hearings in the public interest, and the right to representation. It was a chance to commit wholeheartedly to the State taking responsibility and ensuring effective remedy for the wrongs these fellow citizens experienced when the State either failed to protect them from harm or actively colluded in their harm. We had the chance to commit to finally holding accountable under law those who may be either criminally or civilly responsible, and to ensure those responsible make adequate and appropriate reparations where necessary in the service of justice. This was a chance to heal these victims and the nation as a whole by way of this, and by way of official recognition, apology and memorial.

Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the detail of the proposed Sinn Féin amendment to the Government motion outlined by Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and also most eloquently by our colleague, Deputy Anne Ferris, we are not satisfied with the terms of reference for the commission, not least because it will surely and by design exclude from its remit and consideration literally thousands of victims of serious human rights violations.

There is no guarantee here for the Magdalen women, previously and wrongly deprived of the right to a full commission of investigation into their particular institutional experiences. There is no guarantee for the illegally adopted or fostered or boarded out children, whose very worst experiences may well fall outside the express terms of the commission's remit. If all these victims and survivors represent an experience of second class citizenship, then those who the Minister chooses to exclude are now doubly hurt as second class victims. This is the main reason some of the advocacy concerned have described the terms of reference as "flawed", as a "deep disappointment" and as ultimately "failing the standard for such inquiries".

We all understand that public resources are finite, but this commission must not be about exclusion for the sake of expediency. If that is the result, it will come back to haunt us. The abdication of full responsibility means that future Administrations will be forced into dealing with separate successive sets of victims, that is, if any are left alive to vindicate by that time. Repeating this whole fraught process with various victims will not ultimately save the State or the taxpayer money. Moreover, what money it may save is at disproportionate and unacceptable human expense.

While I welcome the confirmation that there will be an investigation into those institutions expressly included in Appendix 1, I cannot accept, and none of us should accept, that any institution or any victim will be left behind. I appeal to the Minister in that respect. I know he has made some move towards amending a provision by way of definition within the order. I appeal to him to go the extra steps, to accept our amendment and to ensure that this commission is what it can and should be, and that it ensures that no victim, no survivor, is left behind.

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