Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I found the Taoiseach's reply on health issues and the health budget overrun to be helpless and hopeless because, notwithstanding his experience of that Department, he is throwing in the towel on being able to influence it.

When the SCU was closed down, there was an indication, as the Taoiseach said in his reply, that there would be significant savings. In respect of the commission of investigation and the Taoiseach's visit to the Tuam site, does he think it would be possible to transfer some of the savings from the SCU to carry out the wishes of the survivors and the families affected, mostly from Mayo and Galway, who may have had relatives, either women who gave birth to children or babies who were born and died there, to have a full excavation of the site? My understanding is that the investigation would be costly. I do not know if the Taoiseach has managed to visit St. Patrick's on the Navan Road in our constituency. More than 2,000 babies died there and, as local people have always said, they "died like flies" from a variety of diseases in the mother and baby home. Most of them are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery but people who lived there or who were born there want a full and proper investigation. Is there any chance that the Taoiseach could divert the savings from the SCU to something that would be an actual reparation for what happened to those in mother and baby homes?

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