Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I commend the various organisations representing the survivors of the vast array of institutions that formed this architecture of oppression, abuse and persecution which ruined the lives of tens of thousands of women and children.

It abused them, robbed them of their identities and histories and inflicted a crime on tens of thousands of vulnerable people and children. The damage that was done can never be fully undone. All those groups, organisations and individuals deserve credit for finally forcing these issues to the forefront, getting the State and political system to acknowledge that a crime against them has been committed and that as much as possible must be done to detail the full scale of the crime and provide redress and support to the victims of survivors of that great crime. These groups are the Adoption Rights Alliance, the Irish First Mothers group, Justice for the Magdalenes, the survivors of the Bethany Home and Westbank orphanage and other such institutions. Many individuals have not survived and will never see justice on this matter. All of those deserve great tribute for bringing events to this point, where finally the Government and the State has acknowledged the need for some sort of redress.

It is still hard to get one's head around the scale of what was done. Most of the history of this State was one where this great crime was being committed and the most powerful people in church and State were overseeing this horrendous treatment of tens of thousands of women and children on the basis of the extraordinary notion of legitimacy and illegitimacy. It was an incredible thing for a State and church to have in mind when the founding document of that State, which we will celebrate next year, details the cherishing of all children equally, and a church would outline principles of humanity, decency and the ten commandments, etc. At the same time these people would hold in their heads this notion that some people were legitimate and some were illegitimate. On the basis of that notion, they could then stigmatise, abuse, imprison and incarcerate those people, treating them as sub-humans. All the normal rights and dignities that would have been accorded to legitimate people would have been simply denied to them and they were treated like animals. It is just extraordinary that such a position could persist for so long. Even when I was a young person growing up, the notion was still around of stigmatising single mothers and it persisted until the 1980s and 1990s. It was an extraordinary, barbaric and uncivilised perspective on life that justified horrendous crimes.

I was adopted through St. Patrick's Guild and my mother was forced to go to England and give birth to me in a mother and baby home. Many of the mothers who were in a similar position will not be included in this because the birth and adoption took place in England. They will be outside the terms of reference for this commission. I was relatively lucky because I was adopted by a good family and, although my birth mother faced very considerable resistance for many years from the institutions that had facilitated these adoptions, she fought through that resistance, was persistent and was finally able to make contact with me. Therefore, I was lucky in a way that thousands of other people have not been. They will never get to see their children or biological parents and they may never fully recover their history or identities because of the unbelievable architecture of oppression and abuse that existed. There was political cowardice in the failure of successive Governments to address this issue and give redress to the people who were victims of this system.

As a result of pressure and persistence from the survivors of this, we have got to this point so could we please not fall at the last hurdle and deny people the full justice and redress that they are asking for? There is an idea that we can partially deal with this matter, decide that we will look at particular institutions or shine a light on specific parts rather than the entire architecture. All these institutions, including the State, the church and various other bodies, were part of an integrated whole. They were a system of oppression that led to a denial of rights. We need to shine a light on all these so that full justice and redress can be given to all those who seek it. This must come without partiality, restrictions or limitations. As we have got this far, can we not go the entire way and ensure nobody is left outside? We must get all the truth, redress and justice for all the victims in those institutions. None should be excluded from this belated process of justice and acknowledgement of a great crime.

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