Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

What should have been a routine assessment of the activities and expenditure of the scheme was used by Ms Justice Harding Clark to turn it into a vitriolic assault on the victims of this barbaric procedure. It is abhorrent and shameful and should be withdrawn. The Justice in her remarks went way beyond her remit and made accusations without evidence. The report was flawed in its objectivity, full of conjecture and raises serious concerns about the scheme in its entirety. Let us be clear: there would never have been a scheme at all if the women and their advocates had not and campaigned over years to demand justice and accountability for what happened to them. When it was put in place, the scheme was roundly warned about by Members on this side of the House as being inadequate in the manner in which it was structured. Other Deputies have made these points. It was an abysmal scheme. The kinds of awards that were covered by it, for a lifetime of pain and hardship, were minuscule. Obviously, I am glad the women received something, but Ms Justice Harding Clark got more in a year than these women did for a lifetime of suffering. Other Deputies have made the points about the 20 days within which to apply, the methodology for the burden of proof being flawed and the reliance on documentary evidence. The scheme allowed for oral evidence; Ms Justice Harding Clark chose not to use this. The scheme allowed for awards to be made without the admission of liability. This amounted to an expression of regret without responsibility. It is just not on.

The report by Midwives for Choice is an excellent critique of the Harding Clark report. It points out that the Harding Clark report is characterised by a reticence to present actual figures, using vague generalisations instead of key findings, as though keeping the reader in the dark, and that such an absence of transparency and proximity to objective scientific standards at any level means that they do not recognise any contribution to the body of knowledge on symphysiotomy. Midwives for Choice is correct. That the Minister sought to claim in his introductory remarks that this narrative added to our understanding of symphysiotomy clearly demonstrates to me that he has not read the report because the data and methodology for establishing symphysiotomy and any resulting disability were completely inappropriate and unscientific. I challenge the Minister to read the report. In fairness, Midwives for Choice makes the point about the challenges faced by the judge in the absence of objective evidence due to inconsistencies across medical records, birth registers, annual clinical reports and so on. However, it also makes the point that irrespective of these challenges, there was an onus on the judge to do justice to the best of her ability to the women who had put their faith in her, and that the failure to acknowledge the limitations of the scheme's methodology in favour of branding honest and responsible elderly women as false claimants and setting an arbitrary diagnostic bar in full knowledge of the impossibility of women whose symphysis pubis had reapproximated over time reaching it is far from the justice to which these women are entitled.

These actions are irresponsible, and the media coverage was irresponsible and hurtful. The 800-page report devotes just 82 pages to the scheme. The rest consists of the judge's bizarre opinions - and this is not for the first time. She wrote to some of the complainants - and language is important - telling the women to "treat themselves" and commiserating about their "unhappy experiences". She wrote to me and Deputy Wallace in terms which to me were like the ravings of a lunatic. They certainly were not the words of a competent, independent assessor. It was bizarre language, and this bizarre language, the inference and her own ideology seep through the report. It is a defence and a whitewashing of the State's involvement in barbaric practices which have been condemned by international human rights organisations. It utterly should be withdrawn. This issue will not rest. The questions asked by Deputy O'Sullivan about the scientific critique of the report must be answered by the Minister and the Department.

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