Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The third interim report was met with acute dissatisfaction by survivors and their families and supporters, people who had been failed by the State, the religious denominations and the entire establishment. For the lone parents, unmarried mothers and poor parents involved - in many cases, the only crime of those placed in county homes was being homeless or living in poverty - this is not an historic event but a lived reality. Mothers and children were institutionalised and families split up. The mother and baby homes were the product of a misogynist conservative establishment that ran the State for decades.

The extension of time by one year to allow the commission of investigation to make its final report is particularly difficult for survivors, most of whom are elderly and seeking answers to many questions. I am not dismissing or diminishing the problems and complexities the commission and its staff face. The commission has yet to meet many of the large number of people who have been contacting it to give their testimonies. The confidential committee has met hundreds of former residents here and in Britain. Attitudes have changed and more and more women believe they can come forward and speak about their treatment in the institutions. Many of them have still not met the commission.

The second reason given is that records are old, that many are paper files and that the location or existence of some is uncertain. The interim report outlines the major administrative task involved in processing and manually examining these records.

The third issue is that extensive information remains to be provided by the religious congregations and Departments which have been served with discovery orders. What level of non-co-operation has the commission of inquiry encountered from some religious institutions? This question must be answered because it would be disgraceful if a failure to co-operate was causing further delay in the process.

While I acknowledge these problems and issues facing the commission of inquiry, the position is still unsatisfactory for survivors, but steps can be taken in the interim. Survivors need to be given a comprehensive, well researched and definitive report at the end of the process. They must also receive an apology from the State and the religious denominations and this does not have to wait until the commission of inquiry has completed its work.

Many survivors have been wondering on social media and elsewhere why the State is paying for a visit by the Pope at a time when they have not received redress from the religious organisations that abused them or an apology from the church. This is a major issue which many people are raising.

It is estimated that €20 million will be spent by the State on the visit. That is according to the Archbishop of Dublin and I do not know if the church is coughing up for any of it. That amount is three times the budget reported for this commission, which is €7 million. It is legitimate to ask whether we can beef up the budget and take on more staff. I am sure there are students, historians and researchers of all kinds that would love to work on this project and give closure to many of the people in this position. Over the next year we must ensure the commission has further interim and progress reports, and if there are areas on which it can make conclusions, it should do so. I absolutely agree that a redress scheme could be set up for elderly people in particular to avail of. We do not want to be in a position next year, when the report is published, of seeing a delay in setting up a redress scheme. Moves can be made to do it now. Having made the point that societal attitudes are driving the correct call by survivors for redress and how women feel freer to speak, those who have been adopted should also feel free to speak about their experience and how the institutions have impacted on them.

Last week in this Chamber we spoke on the 100th anniversary of the right of women to vote being marked by the State. At the same time women were being granted the right to vote, they were having their rights taken away from them in other areas. There was a counter-revolution taking place against women's rights when the State was established. We saw women getting the right to vote but being taken off juries. We saw women getting the right to vote but being denied contraception until the 1970s. The right to a divorce was removed in this country and it was only won back in the 1990s. In the past 25 years, there has been a transformation in attitudes and the role of women in Irish society, much of it driven by the increased number of women in the workforce.

At the time when some of these mother and baby homes were still open, such as in 1973, only 15% of married women worked. Today that figure has increased significantly. The participation in the workplace by women has risen to 63%, and 34% of women have a third level qualification versus 28% of men. However, the pay gap has remained for women. The key point is that while we get redress for people in the mother and baby homes, the time is up for the oppression of women in this country in general. Mother and baby homes were sustained by a hostile attitude to women's sexuality and value in society, with the church and State colluding to have institutions as the sanction that would be taken against women who did not conform to the role models of the time and having children only within wedlock. Women were to be the providers of free domestic labour at this time, and we can see that in the institutions where their work was unpaid.

We are approaching a referendum that will primarily deal with the rights of women over their bodies. Parties and individuals should be consistent. There is a link. For example, we should end the shaming of women's sexuality and recognise that women with crisis pregnancies should be allowed to make their own decisions, which they were not at this time. It relates to the referendum that is about to take place on abortion. In 2013, for example, it is quite amazing that the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland was given the power to sign off on regulations where the personal moral standards of a pharmacist could result in a women being denied emergency contraception. This case was highlighted only last week. In the past four years a 14-year jail sentence was introduced as a sanction for use of the abortion pill or having an abortion. Just last year the Government saw fit to turn over the ownership of the National Maternity Hospital to one of the religious institutions facing accusations and which is responsible for institutional abuse. That decision was only reversed because of a major public backlash and we still have politicians extremely far behind on these matters.

Today we have a transformed attitude to women and one in four families is now a one-parent family. It is absolutely time for this redress to be given to all those who are victims of this repressive attitude of the church and State towards women. Everything should be done in terms of resources to ensure the process is done by next year. If there is any delay, it will cause outcry and be a huge kick in the teeth to people already victimised by the State.

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