Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

3 o’clock

I thank all of the Deputies for their comments, reflections and questions. As Deputy O'Sullivan and others indicated, we have discussed this issue many times in this Chamber. It is really important for me to listen to the issues that Deputies raise as we all try to identify the best way and what kinds of actions we need to do in order to move forward when we think about and try to uncover the meaning of the past. I am grateful for that. I will address some of the common themes that I have heard. If I do not answer all of the questions posed, I will be happy to do that in another forum.

One of the main themes coming through, on which we are all agreed, is that the people who have been most impacted by the issues that we are debating and discussing ought to be at the centre of everything that we do. That is why I am so grateful that so many of them have come to be with us today. I was struck by Deputy Catherine Murphy's comments about how we name the people who are at the centre. I know that lots of different language has been used, including victims, survivors, family, advocates of family and so forth. I hope that as we move forward - and that is what I have tried to indicate in terms of the actions that I have identified that we will be doing on the basis of a lot of work in the past few months to take these actions - that there will be more and more engagement with survivors and family in order that what it is that we decide to do as we move forward to the best of our ability will be as a result of bringing together as best we can a consensus in relation to whatever the issues are.

In terms of Tuam, the decision that we are taking as a Government to move forward, particularly in relation to the site, is a very big one. It is important to get technical advice on what it is that they are going to do. I met with Ms McCullagh before coming into the Chamber. She explained that this type of technical work has not been done anywhere else in the world. She described to me a lot of the technical, scientific and engineering complexities that are going to be engaged in this regard. That is why it was important to pull together a number of international experts in order to try to get as much information as we can in order to offer the information that comes in the most understandable language for all of us, so that we know what it is that these scientists are suggesting to us in terms of what is possible. Ms McCullagh spoke about what is possible from the least intrusive option, which is to do nothing and indeed there are some people who want that, to the most intrusive option, namely a fuller excavation and exhumation, with attempts to identify the remains. We need to know what is actually involved in that in order to understand what is possible. I asked for that initial report outlining some of the basics of those options by the end of June, which is pretty quick given the context, in order that we can have an outline of the options which can feed into the consultations that will go on in relation to the process in Tuam with the people and particularly the families and survivors, as well as the residents. Galway County Council will also be involved. That is relatively quick but it is important that the information is part of it as we move forward. I hope that even that kind of process is finally more respectful of dealing with the people who are at the centre of this.

Many Deputies spoke about the fact that I would like to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on transitional justice, reparation and truth to visit. I have indicated explicitly that I am going to ask my Cabinet colleagues to support that invitation. We have not yet issued the invitation but I am heartened to hear that Deputies agree that we should do so. I believe international expertise could be extremely helpful to us in terms of the wider responses to issues raised by the mother and baby homes and the commission of investigation itself. Dr. de Greiff, prior to becoming Special Rapporteur was director of research at the International Center for Transitional Justice. He has extensive experience on these issues in lots of countries. I believe such a visit would reflect the commitment of this Government to our people, both at home and abroad and will demonstrate that we are willing to work with the United Nations on our own territory in relation to issues of potential human rights abuses and also the ways in which we can respond to this. We do have some transitional justice measures already in place but more may be required in terms of moving forward, particularly in relation to a truth commission, which we debated in the context of a very helpful motion put forward by Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire previously. It is my personal wish that we could have something like that established. It would be very helpful for us to have some expertise to draw on in terms of the best possible way to do that, given the fact that we have a commission of investigation that is still ongoing. I hope that if we invite Dr. de Greiff he will help us to look at how we can move forward in relation to responding. While we are not exactly at the beginning, when the commission of investigation reports in February of 2018 that will be a big milestone. However, it is still perhaps an earlier period and there may be many more things that we need to do in order to truly respond to the issues that are being raised.

Many Deputies identified the issue of redress in the context of the second interim report. Let me be clear that what the commission was recommending was the opening up of the residential institutions redress scheme to children who were resident in the main mother and baby homes without their mothers, that is, to unaccompanied children. That is the language that was used. It was said that those children should have had access to the redress scheme, using the same logic as for other institutions that were included in that. As I have said before, I personally agreed with that analysis. However, I ultimately decided, with my Cabinet colleagues, that the redress scheme was not the best option for those unaccompanied children or children who were without their mothers in mother and baby homes and county homes. I outlined the reasons for that decision earlier. According to the residential institutions redress scheme, they would have to demonstrate a certain level of abuse and they would have to have been much younger - between the ages of zero and three years. Furthermore, there has not been any definite declaration by the commission of investigation of findings of abuse. That is not to say the commission will not do that. What I want to stress is that I was not at all ruling out redress. The commission of investigation will submit its report in February 2018. It may recommend redress in that report but equally, it may not. It is at that stage that we look at that issue more fully and learn from the ways in which the State has offered or attempted to offer redress in the past in various schemes. That is why, having said "No" for that particular group, we asked what we could do and whether there was a way to offer any other form of support, including health and well being support. We are beginning a consultation process with former residents to try to identify the most helpful forms of health and well-being supports.

I heard also that it would be useful to open that to a wider group of people. We will be taking a look at that. Deputy Clare Daly asked about the timeframe in that regard. We are beginning on 30 June. I hope to bring proposals to the Cabinet in the fall. We have not set an exact timeframe yet because we are not certain how many people want to be consulted. Where that is the case, we want to be as inclusive as possible.

As I think I am out of time, I cannot address all the other issues that have been raised. I have tried to identify a number of actions to move forward with the Government's ongoing response to the mother and baby homes issue. I will say in conclusion that I believe issues relating to the separation of church and State are critical. I acknowledge the great deal of work that has been done by Deputy Bríd Smith and her colleagues in that regard. We do not necessarily need to put down the church as we attempt to separate it from the State. However, this separation is necessary. I hope that will be part of this process as we move forward with it.

See this speech in context