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

I support amendments Nos. 17 and 18. Amendment No. 19 addresses the concerns expressed by Magdalen laundry survivors and their advocates, which are shared by Sinn Féin and other Deputies, that despite the Minister's insistence to the contrary, the legislation will not give full effect to Judge Quirke's recommendations. Despite the deficiencies in the legislation and discrepancies between the Quirke recommendations and the Minister's provisions, the Minister has not addressed them by way of amendment. We knew and said from the outset that Opposition amendments to give effect to the recommendations would be ruled out of order on Committee Stage because they would, by necessity, impose a charge on the State. That is precisely how it happened, and ten of the 11 proposed for Committee Stage debate were ruled out of order on this basis. They could not have been debated by the Deputies present, which rendered the debate on the Bill, to some extent, tokenism. For this reason, I urged the Minister to propose the amendments, as she had the power to do so. She did not take me up on it.

In light of this, and because I do not accept that the Minister's characterisation of her legislation is accurate, we should test those assertions by submitting the legislation to the independent scrutiny of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which has the power to advise on the human rights impact of legislative proposals in order to evaluate or, if possible, verify whether the legislation complies fully with Judge Quirke's recommendations.

My amendment proposes that a report to this effect should be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas within one month of the enactment of this Bill. I accept it is not ideal but I was advised that had I attempted to table an amendment to block enactment pending the commission’s verification, as I had originally planned to do, that amendment would also have been ruled out of order. This is very much a compromise amendment. If it is the case that, as she claims, the legislation is completely ad idemwith the recommendations of the Quirke report I would imagine that the Minister, like the rest of us, would welcome the process I am proposing and the report and verification, and accept the amendment.

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