Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many of the people involved are getting older and facing ill-health. About a month ago I spoke to a woman who had been in the home in Tuam where she had gone through a very difficult time. The extension of time really concerns her. Where will it end? People need to be given an absolute assurance that we will come to a conclusion of this process very soon. It has altered their lives and those of their families and everyone around them.

It is almost six months since we debated this issue. A couple of weeks after the last debate I met a man who told me that his brother had worked in one of the homes in the 1950s and later emigrated. The reason he had emigrated was that he had worked there for about four or five months and had been shocked by the attitude the people who ran the place had towards whom he described as the inmates. It had been like a prison. It had brought the person concerned to a situation where he felt he could no longer stay in Ireland and had to leave. It was not for financial reasons, the reason most people emigrated, but because of what he had experienced and the type of country he thought it was.

We need to recognise that our past is something we cannot change. We have to be careful about how we talk about it and what we do about it. None of us in this House is responsible for what happened in the past, but we are responsible for how we deal with it. That is what this is about. It is about how we deal with the consequences of the wrongs done in the past. We really need to focus on this issue. How we deal with this will be a reflection on us and the part we played for future generations. The Minister is genuine and the Government wants to try to do the right thing. However, a lot of people are fearful that it is playing for time. It needs to be acknowledged that it is not playing for time and that we are trying to find a solution. There is a need for a solution that is wholesome for the people involved and society in order that everyone will feel he or she has a stake in this process. What happened in the mother and baby homes is a poor reflection on our past. We now have an opportunity to change it.

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