Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister will forgive me if I leave out praise as I have just three minutes and will use them appropriately. It is welcome that an expert team will be appointed, that a specific timeframe has been given and that terms of reference will be published today. I welcome the monthly reports and the scoping exercise but I am extremely disappointed that we still have no timeframe for it. The Minister received this report from the commission in September 2016. It is now May 2017. It is welcome that the Minister is dealing with the Tuam site.

I am very concerned about the distinction the Minister is drawing between children who were in the homes with their mothers and those who were in the homes without their mothers. I believe she is misinterpreting either deliberately or unintentionally the report that was produced by the commission. On page three of her speech today, the Minister said that she is going to set up consultations with those who were resident as children without their mothers. This is a shocking distinction. Perhaps I am misreading it and perhaps the Minister can explain it. I believe the Minister has taken this inappropriately from the mother and baby homes commission of investigation. I believe the motivation for the commission's interim report was to draw attention to the way this Government and previous Governments have dealt with the mother and baby homes and left them outside the redress scheme most unjustly. The commission made the point that children without mothers had a particular grievance. It did not state babies who were in the homes with their mothers should not be included. The Minister is drawing a false distinction and she should go back and read the commission's report.

The commission also stated the exclusion of the mother and baby homes from the redress board merited serious consideration by the Government. I believe the Government has simply dismissed that out of hand, which is appalling. In respect of the finding of no abuse, I do not believe that this interim report found that there was no abuse. The commission stated this was an interim report; therefore, reading the report in its generality, what the commission is stating is that it was carrying out an interim report to highlight the way the Government was treating the mother and baby homes unjustly.

In respect of the Minister's remark that too many decisions were taken in the dark, they were not actually taken in the dark. I speak as somebody with experience on both a personal level from an extended family and a professional level. None of these decisions was taken in the dark. They were taken in the open. That is the irony of this. They were taken openly not just by the nuns but also by the courts, solicitors, judges and gardaí. Many middle-class homes in Ireland benefitted from the mother and baby homes and the Magdalen laundries.

I welcome the Minister's speech today and the fact that she went to Tuam. However, it has come about not because of her initiative or that of the Government. I do not wish to personalise it. It has come about because of the sacrifice and effort made by the survivors and survivors' groups who are in the Visitors Gallery and who I welcome. They have forced this situation on to the agenda and have forced us to use our voices in this Chamber to get the Government to respond and to hold it to account. That is why we are here discussing this matter.

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