Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I welcome to the Visitors Gallery people who are directly affected by this ongoing scandal of the so-called mother and baby homes. It is a term that we should start changing, because they were not homes and they were not centred around the mother and the baby. We really need to change the whole language around this issue. Everything about the way the State handles this issue is to avoid, suppress and cover up. It is not just in the past. We all know that for 90 years, the independent State outsourced to the Catholic Church massive power to control women, education and health. That was even the case in the recent past. The 2009 Ryan report, which led to the setting up of the Caranua scheme, set aside very little money and gave the church a massive out, as we know, much of which still has not been paid. That scheme is really like treating the victims as if they have been given a gift. They have to come with receipts and justify what they get. When I spoke during the last debate, I made the point that if somebody gets compensation for maltreatment or abuse, what the person does with it is completely up to him or her. If he or she wants to go to Las Vegas and spend it all on one night, that is entirely his or her business and nobody else's. Compare that to this idea of having to justify every couple of thousand euro that one gets.

I also want to deal with 2012, because that was only five years ago. It is a very recent period. It was when the McAleese inquiry into the Magdalen laundries was informed about disturbing death rates of more than 50% to 55%. We read in the Irish Examinereven in the last few days that Professor Jim Smith wrote to the chairman of that inquiry about these very allegations in Tuam before they had come to headline attention in the international media. He reported what he discovered relating to a 1948 Government survey that recorded the number of "illegitimate" children who were born and died in mother and baby homes and county homes for the year ending 1948. Basically, the number of deaths was more than half the number of births. That is an absolutely shocking statistic. That information never appeared in the final McAleese report. Questions need to be asked why. The McAleese inquiry no longer exists, but the people who conducted it and Mr. McAleese should answer a few questions about it.

To bring us up to where we are today, the Minister has announced an expansion in the terms of reference, an appointment of an osteoarcheologist and a transitional justice scheme for the survivors. Those are all welcome, but we need a full truth commission, a full examination and a criminal investigation of this and other sites. These should be crime scenes at this stage with forensic investigation. Why is it just an international expert who visits? The documents should be seized in the interests of an investigation. Of course, we need full compensation and redress. The Minister apparently said recently that is not on the cards right now. There is a massive impact on people's lives because of what has been done to them and the nature of it is that survivors tend to come forward much later in life.

We also need a separation of church and State. This has marked a sea change in attitudes in this country. The State has been implicit in the entire regime with the church, yet still the politicians are beholden to the institutionalised Catholic Church and some of its orders, as we have seen with the national maternity hospital fiasco, which was backtracked due to a people-powered campaign.

I heard one of the previous Deputies thanking the nuns that she went to school with, which is fine. I just want to correct one myth. The Catholic Church did not step in to provide education and health because the State was not interested. It opposed at every hand's turn in the past 100 years the setting up of a national school system and State services. If Deputies want me to start documenting it, of course I do not have time, but the mother and baby scheme is a classic example. The church was never interested in that. It was interested in keeping denominational and sectarian education. We can lay that myth to rest.

We need much more than what the Minister has announced today and hopefully we will hear much more very soon.

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