Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

It must be registered that this is a massive issue among the public. I have never seen such anger as I did about the revelations at Tuam. We know the allegations are not new but the fact that they have been confirmed by a Government established commission has given it an authenticity. The pioneering work of Catherine Corless has been confirmed. Will the Minister indicate when she will announce the action that is needed in relation to these homes? The Minister has spoken in the media about a truth commission. What does that entail and when will she announce it? It is crystal clear that the types of commissions of investigation that the Government has established in the past are completely inadequate to deal with this issue.

We need all the sites where religious orders ran so-called homes to be investigated and excavated if there is evidence of similar burials. Records must be handed over by these religious orders. No longer can they evade responsibility in that regard. We need an investigation into allegations that have been going on in the HSE since 2012 about the trafficking of children for profit to the United States for adoption. We need criminal pursuance should that be warranted, which it is clearly. Most of all we need to have a serious separation of church and State in this country. I have no faith, unfortunately, that it will be done by Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. These are the two parties who, for the guts of a century, have allowed the church to have this authority and control over women, sexuality, health and education.

I did some research into the types of laws brought in by Cumann na nGaedheal – as they were then – and then Fianna Fáil. There was nearly a competition to impress the church with parties outbidding and raising each other with censorship laws. That is the way it was in the 1920s and the 1930s. For example, in 1925, women in Ireland were barred from Civil Service exams. In 1926, Cumann na nGaedheal, the predecessors of those people with whom the Minister is now in coalition, and the then Department of Justice established a committee on evil literature made up of three laymen, obviously, a representative of the Catholic Church and Kevin O' Higgins. The committee recommended the banning of publications that made any reference to birth control as were women’s magazines along with publications that covered any news of murders. Not to be outdone, in 1927, women were removed from juries, having played the great role in the so-called fight for independence and, in 1929, the Censorship of Publications Act was introduced.

Fianna Fáil came to power in the 1930s and having been excommunicated for fighting in the civil war, the party had to impress the church. The Eucharistic Congress in 1932 turned the whole of Ireland into a shrine for the Pope's representative. In 1932, the marriage bar was brought in and female primary school teachers who got married lost their jobs. Then we had the Conditions of Employment Act to prohibit women from certain employment. One of my favourites came in 1936 when the National Maternity Hospital made it compulsory for the Archbishop of Dublin and the parish priest from Westland Row to be on the board of the National Maternity Hospital - I assume it was for their gynaecological expertise. I am bringing forward a Bill to remove that facility and to repeal that law. I will not go into the banning of divorce as I do not have time in the less than one minute remaining to me, but we can see from my examples the way the two big parties who have dominated this State have allowed the church to have this control and authority without any brakes being put on to them at all. We have seen that these commissions are very reluctant to overturn or open up the can of worms in respect of repealing the eighth amendment and other issues.

11 o’clock

We should forget the idea that the Catholic Church can intervene in debates on morality or on matters such as repeal of the eighth amendment. What a joke that it says all life is sacred. It cared nothing about the babies' or children's bodies that were unceremoniously dumped or about poor and pregnant women. It should not be telling pregnant women what they can and cannot do. This is a gamechanger. We need complete separation of church and State. A Government of the left is the only one that will do this because there does not seem to be an appetite for this on the part of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I have not heard many other parties, critical as they may be of these events, call for it either. Representatives of the church should not be on hospital or school boards. We need a secular education system with sex education that is lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, LGBT, inclusive, that is not gender normative and does not lecture or prohibit discussion on issues. We also need to repeal the eighth amendment now. We need to forget about the church dominating and the State allowing it to.

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