Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Tuam is not just a burial ground, it is a social and cultural sepulchre. That is what it is. As a society in the so-called "good old days", we did not just hide away the dead bodies of tiny human beings, we dug deep and deeper still to bury our compassion, our mercy and our humanity itself. No nuns broke into our homes to kidnap our children. We gave them up to what we convinced ourselves was the nuns' care. We gave them up maybe to spare them the savagery of gossip, the wink-and-elbow language of delight in which the "holier than thous" were particularly fluent. We gave them up because of our perverse, in fact, morbid relationship with what is called respectability. Indeed, for a while it seemed as if in Ireland our women had the amazing capacity to self-impregnate. For their trouble, we took their babies and gifted them, sold them, trafficked them, starved them, neglected them or denied them to the point of their disappearance from our hearts, our sight, our country and, in the case of Tuam and possibly other places, from life itself.

We are all shocked now. If the fruit of her religious and social transgression could be discarded, what treatment was meted out to the transgressor herself? We had better deal with this now because if we do not, some other Taoiseach will be standing here in 20 years saying, "If only we knew then, if only we had done then". What will be his or her then is our now. Now, we do know. Now, we have to do. All of us in this House must do so together.

This commission of investigation has completed some of its work and has carried out the physical excavations on this chamber of horrors in Tuam. What is now needed is some reflection on the processes required. There is an independence for the coroner. There is an independence for the Garda. There is a duty in terms of the local authority. Obviously, those whose siblings and families were affected are distraught. There is a role for the coroner in north Galway to consider what steps may be necessary and appropriate in accordance with his statutory functions. The commission has not made formal findings yet. What it has done is complete the physical excavation, so we now know that there are substantial remains of very young children in this spot.

We need to have some little time to reflect on the issues that Deputy Micheál Martin has raised. Clearly, the fact that we set up a Department of Children, a Ministry for children, the Child and Family Agency and held a referendum to enshrine to rights of children in Bunreacht na hÉireann speaks for the direction in which the Government wishes to go.

I would like to think I could answer "Yes" to all the Deputy's questions now but I respect the independence of both the Garda and the coroner in respect of the progress that must be made in the next steps. Yes, we are all shocked. Yes, let us do something about it then.

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