Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The motion is comprehensive, well thought out and ticks every box in terms of how the victims and survivors of this terrible debacle should be dealt with and how we try to get at the truth. I note with interest the reference to South Africa, Chile, Australia and Canada. These states secretly carried out butchery and genocide, and engaged in cruelty against generations of people. The same description could be applied to the mother and baby homes on the basis of the information we have as of now. However, we have to get at the truth. In the case of South Africa under the apartheid regime, Chile under Pinochet and the treatment of the native peoples of Canada and Australia, the truth commissions examined something that was over. In the case of Ireland, the abuses of the church and State against people, given the control of the religious and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, is not over. They are being maintained and we need to know more than what Sinn Féin is suggesting. I back the motion fully but I would like to amend it to state that what we say matters but what we do matters even more. To that end, I echo calls made by former Minister for Health, Deputy Micheál Martin, the current Minister for Health and by myself previously that the religious orders who dominated the State and who still dominate our health and education services be called in.

My amendment calls for three steps to be taken. I am calling for all necessary steps to be taken, and not to break the law by, first, rescinding the so-called Woods deal which indemnified all the churches and religious orders in 2002 under the congressional indemnity agreement; second, taking all the necessary steps to take into public ownership hospitals controlled by religious orders, including the Bon Secours, which is a private group, St. Vincent's Hospital and the Mater Hospital; and, third, beginning the process of the separation of church and State finally by removing the control of religious orders over the boards of management of our schools and hospitals. A total of 95% of our national schools are controlled by religious orders and a newspaper reported yesterday that six of the Dublin hospitals controlled by religious orders have wealth approaching €1 billion. We all know how little the churches paid back in restitution for the abuse. If we want to honour the legacy of those mothers and babies and address the terrible crimes committed against them, we have to begin to unravel where the crimes stem from by pulling up everything root and branch and, therefore, making a huge commitment to the separation of church and State. That is the amendment I would like to make to a well thought out motion, which deserves to be considered, rather than the Minister's amendment, which says we should leave this alone and wait until the commission reports. It is like telling me when I introduced a Bill to reduce the 14-year sentence relating to abortion not to change the law until we hear back from the Citizens Assembly. Things can be done in tandem rather than waiting.

See this speech in context