Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, although I do not support it, and I will try to clarify why. The motion is not appropriate at the moment, given there is a commission of investigation, and we should use our combined strength to change its terms of reference to force accountability in respect of the interim report that is sitting on a desk since September 2016 without an explanation as to what is going on. We should listen to the survivors and the families, including my own, which have been deeply and personally affected by the mother and baby homes scandal.

The Minister quoted Heaney and, while he is one of my favourite poets and normally I would delight in hearing his poetry quoted anywhere, I would have preferred if she had quoted some of the survivors or from the briefing document prepared in October 2012 by officials in the Department of Health highlighting serious concerns relating to patient ill-health and the safety of babies in the mother and baby homes in Tuam and Bessborough, the possible alteration of birth and death certificates and other matters in the context of the Martin McAleese report. They said they did not have the wherewithal to investigate these issues. That is one of many briefing documents. We do not know how many and, while I accept the Minister's bona fides, my confidence in them has been stretched a little, notwithstanding that she inherited the situation.

It has certainly been stretched by the Minister's failure to publish the interim report. I wish that is what we were discussing in the Dáil with a view to having an influence on the terms of reference, the scoping extension the Minister has spoken about and so on. Now we are talking about a truth commission rather than forcing accountability in the ongoing process. One of the serious failures I have seen in the Dáil in my time and prior to it is its utter failure to hold the system to account. It is a point repeated ad nauseamby judges when they are put in charge of tribunals. They have repeatedly said if politicians asked questions and demanded answers, we would not need as many tribunals. Here we have a commission of inquiry with an interim report that has not been published and there is no excuse for that. It is appalling. Then there is a statement from the Minister saying we are coming to terms with the news as a community, a people and as a nation. I will try to stay away from the personal but as someone who is affected, we are coming to terms not with what happened but with the continual hiding of it by successive Governments and institutions. I have highlighted one briefing document that has not been referred to by the Minister or anybody in the Government and asked why it was not acted upon.

The issue of vaccine trials has been highlighted. It was highlighted in the commission into child abuse and unfortunately there was a judicial review to stop because the tribunal was acting outside its terms of reference. No Government has gone back to look at that. Once again, it was left.

I have asked repeatedly for a number of things in the current inquiry. I have asked that the site in Tuam be sealed off forensically and held. I have asked that other sites be looked at. I have asked that the time for the current commission be extended to allow more people to come forward in view of what was confirmed in Tuam. I do not say "discovered" because Catherine Corless highlighted this two years ago. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was certainly aware of it from the many people who came forward and gave testimony. The Martin McAleese interdepartmental inquiry was fully aware of what was going on in the mother and baby homes so none of this comes as a shock. The shock is the continued cover-up. As someone who has been affected, I am not looking for reconciliation at this point for me. The survivors who are struggling gallantly to survive have not asked for reconciliation. What they have asked for is to be treated with dignity and respect and to be given maximum information. The Minister talks about empowering and I take it at face value. Survivors are empowered by being given maximum information. That is not happening. We have somebody down in the High Court currently looking for records. He had to go to the High Court to force a situation to get information about his sister. All of this is on the public record. When we see death certificates for places like the mother and baby home in Tuam, we cannot rely on them. The briefing document from October 2012 told us there was a serious possibility that those death certificates had been tampered with. Are we to mourn for those who are related to us who are supposedly buried in chambers in the mother and baby home in Tuam, in Bessborough and elsewhere? Are we to go and look to see if they have been adopted in America through illegal adoptions? The briefing document highlights that babies were shipped to America and many other countries. There were treble payments made to the mother and baby homes. The two that are cited are Bessborough and Tuam. There were payments by the mother, the State and the adoptive parents in America who were waiting for the children they were going to adopt to come over. All of this has been set out. None of it is new. Not one single piece of it is new. If the Minister is seriously interested in a new regime, openness and accountability, let us stop issuing statements that she will talk to the historians, academics and advocates and let us make a statement that we will listen to the survivors and families in the first instance. Will the Minister please stand up in the Dáil and account for why the report has not been published? Will she commit to a full and frank debate about that report as soon as it is published and confirm tonight the date of the publication of that report? That is what openness and accountability mean, at least to me. It is the least the survivors deserve.

I will finish by paying tribute to Mary Raftery whose name is not heard often enough in the Dáil. She died prematurely on 10 January 2012. She did extraordinary work in "States of Fear" back in 1999, in her book Suffer the Little Childrenand in "Cardinal Secrets". That woman exposed more in Ireland and forced more inquiries than the Dáil, which should have forced the situation.

In case anybody here forgets, let me finally quote the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Education and Science, Batt O'Keeffe, who said in September 2009 the Magdalen women were not entitled to redress from the State as the State "did not refer individuals nor was it complicit in referring individuals" to the Magdalen laundries. That was and remains the level of denial in this country. The McAleese report was forced by the then Irish Human Rights Commission, which did its own report. If the Minister has heard what I said and is truly interested in being open and accountable, let us start by confirming the date and by confirming there will be an open discussion with the view to looking at a commission of inquiry but first by extending the terms of the current inquiry.

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