Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will speak first, if that is in order. There are only two of us sharing this timeslot myself and Deputy Mattie McGrath and we will each take five minutes.

I thank the Minister for bringing this subject to the floor of the Dáil. There is so much that can be said about this issue and we must all hang our heads in shame. As Deputy Clare Daly said, these facts have been known for years but it again required a whistleblower, a women who investigated tirelessly, to bring this matter to public attention.

We are deemed to be the land of saints and scholars. That is what I was taught in school but it appears from many revelations in recent years that it was only the land of saints and scholars for the privileged and for those who were compliant with the Catholic Church. If one deviated in any way, one was condemned. At the age of seven I learned right from wrong in school. Everybody in Ireland learned right from wrong or at least they should have. It is a natural instinct. We should know what is correct and what is not correct. What we are dealing with here is are moral, legal and ethical issues. Moral judgments were made on these women and children by the church but also by their families in society, who placed, encouraged or forced these women into these institutions. The State also judged them on moral grounds. These were fallen women who had sinned and were to be hidden away and their children were stained with the label of illegitimacy and they were judged to be less than human. Women perhaps were abused for a second time as a result of their pregnancy by being put into these institutions and perhaps repeatedly ended up being pregnant and being put into these institutions again. They disappeared from their home, village and townland only to return a year or two later with gossip and rumour surrounding them. Many had to emigrate to England and some died as a result of their pregnancy. They died of shame because they were pregnant and we must remember those as well. Yet the fathers of these children escaped without stain or without public scrutiny and we must also bear the shame of that.

Children were neglected to the extent that they died but not only did they die, they were discarded without ceremony or without dignity. That is a very difficult thing to understand, that a Catholic institution would discard a baby, his or her human remains, without any ceremony, dignity or recognition that he or she had lived in this world.

The Catholic Church stands in the glare of exposure and investigation yet again. It only takes good men to do nothing for evil to thrive and that is exactly what happened here. The State has also very serious questions to answer in this regard in that it sponsored these institutions. When we look back at the Kerry babies controversy, this is the Kerry babies multiplied by hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds. The medical profession must also have questions to answer in this regard. How could so many children have died in these institutions? How could questions not have been asked about how these young children died? Again, it was swept under the carpet without those children having any dignity or recognition.

Ireland has failed these women and children. This only happened one generation ago. It is not as if it happened 100 or 50 years ago. It was happening up until the 1990s. It is absolutely unbelievable. It is disgrace and a dreadful indictment of Irish society.

We have commemorated the Famine for the past 160 odd years. We have viewed it as the darkest blot in our history. We have examined the Famine and blamed it on others but this situation is equivalent to the Famine and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We are responsible for what happened. We are responsible in that we allowed the Catholic Church to allow this happen and we allowed the State to sponsor it. It is a disgrace and I hope the inquiry will get to the truth of this matter. I do not believe we can expect people to be brought to justice but we need to expose our institutions and ensure that this never happens again.

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