Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an deis labhairt ar an rún seo. Tá sé deacair orm labhairt faoi, i ndáiríre, ós rud é go bhfuil mé bainteach agus ceangailte leis an scéal seo go pearsanta agus go proifisiúnta, ach déanfaidh mé mo dhícheall.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion today. I find it difficult on many levels as both professionally and personally I have had involvement with this matter for many years. There is a recent image of a 103 year old woman, Elizabeth, meeting her 81 year old daughter, Eileen, in Scotland. Eileen was a resident in the Bethany Home. Surely that image alone might have prodded the Minister into making a different speech today. In no way do I mean to be personal and I have the greatest respect for the Minister but all I can think is that she has been taken captive by her Department. It is difficult to understand as the most important aspect in all this is trust. I appreciate that the Minister inherited a terrible situation and she is trying to deal with a difficult matter but trust is very important.

The speech made today was disingenuous in parts, and I use that word very reluctantly. The Minister said there would be no redress at this point because we must wait until the commission completes its work. I really find it difficult to hide my frustration.

4 o’clock

The second interim report clearly identifies the need for the Government to look at a redress scheme. It does not state that the Government must wait until publication of the final report. Paragraph 4.29 states, "Accordingly, the Commission considers that the exclusion of the named Mother and Baby Homes ... needs to be [examined]." It goes on to state, "Children who were resident in these institutions without their mothers would seem to have been in the same position as children resident in the institutions which were eligible for redress." It goes on to appeal to the Government - the Minister is the face of the Government today - to look at a redress scheme because there was no justification for distinguishing between those who received compensation from the industrial schools and those children who were in mother and baby homes. The commission makes a distinction in respect of those who were unaccompanied. I will not go into that distinction today but I do not accept it.

I wish the Minister's speech-writer - I do not know if she wrote her speech herself - had read the various reports. I have taken the trouble to read them all so I am briefed on the matter before I speak. I cannot understand how the Minister can fail to agree to at least the first section of the motion, which calls for a redress scheme for those who spent time in mother and baby homes. She referred to there being no abuses identified. Going back to the original redress scheme, with which I was involved in a professional capacity, former residents had to show medical reports to the effect that they had suffered. It was not a question of liability or blame at that point, although blame certainly was apportioned separately from the Ryan report. The most appalling part of this is that if I say what these people got, I would still be committing an offence and liable to a penalty or imprisonment. That would also be the case if those who received awards under the redress scheme disclosed any information. This is the background, which continued right into the 21st century. Here we are today appealing to the Government to do the decent and right thing and set up a redress scheme, and the Minister responds with a speech of this nature that is simply unacceptable.

I have repeatedly quoted the memos that were given to the Government in 2012 on the Tuam and Bessborough mother and baby homes. It was quite clear that there were significant volumes of information. I will come back to the fifth interim report if I have time. I refer to an absence of information. The draft briefing paper was published in 2012. I have quoted from it before. Has the Minister read these briefing papers? Have they been brought to the attention of the commission? They refer to a wealth of information on Bessborough and Tuam. They state that the records relating to Tuam were "detailed and extensive" and would require time to comb through. They go on finally to refer to irregularities, areas of concern regarding patient safety and, with relevance to this debate, "possible interference with birth and death certification" requiring further investigation. These are the briefing papers that were brought to Government in 2012 by means of Martin McAleese's report on the Magdalen laundries. That report clarified that the committee could not investigate but wanted to ensure that the matter would be investigated. It was not, and here we are today. That was 2012, it is now 2019 and we are still appealing for a basic redress scheme for those who spent time in mother and baby homes, where, to put it mildly, they suffered the most appalling neglect. I am very often critical of social workers but I pay tribute to the social worker referred to in these briefing notes, who did a tremendous amount of work at the time in the west of Ireland to highlight the scandal on her own time and in the evenings.

The Minister is nodding, but perhaps she will nod to indicate that she will withdraw her amendment. When we look at the fifth interim report, which I have read in detail, what jumps out, and the more difficult question to answer, is why the children were buried in such an inappropriate manner. I refer specifically to Tuam, where 798 children died. The report explores whether the burial sites were used as sewage tanks. This question is the only slight divergence. The burial sites would seem to have been used for a certain length of time as sewage tanks. They certainly were not burial chambers. The commission goes on to highlight the role of the county council and its failure to supply information, co-operate, comment on the draft report sent to it and so on. This is the very county council that was put in charge of the consultation process. Can the Minister imagine that? The interim report highlights the county council's inadequacies, to put it mildly, and this is the very body that the Government put in charge of a consultation process. I recall being in Tuam at the same time as the Minister, and fair play to her for attending. The Tánaiste, Deputy Coveney, who was Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government at the time, was also present. The Minister referred to bringing closure. She fundamentally missed the point. It is about bringing openness, not closure, and stopping the buried secrets. We have not just buried bodies in sewage chambers, but also buried secrets, and unless we realise this and go forward, we will not learn.

Many things jump off the pages of the fifth interim report. In a sense they are not relevant to today's debate, but I could not let one or two of them go without mention. There is the sale of infant bodies, at a cost of ten shillings each, to the medical faculty in Galway Central Hospital, as it was then called. Some bodies may have come from the mother and baby home. This jumps off page 55. The affidavits also jump off the pages of the report. The affidavit in this case happens to relate to the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Its affidavit was "speculative, inaccurate and misleading".

I sat here and listened to the Minister's contribution and then to that on behalf of Fianna Fáil. I have the greatest respect for Deputy O'Loughlin, but when she talks about waiting until the commission does its work, I do not think Fianna Fáil Deputies have read the report or realise that the commission clearly called on the Government to consider establishing a redress scheme. Furthermore, these dark secrets are not in the past but very much in the present. As long as the Minister is a member of the Government, she is a part of the secrets continuing to be covered up and the language being used about truth, love and honesty while all the time there is no uncovering of the terrible deeds that were done.

On the previous occasion I quoted Oliver St. John Gogarty and it is worth doing so again. Some 91 years ago he stated, "It is high time that the people of this country find some other way of loving God than by hating women." Things have dramatically changed for the better for women, but that underlying ideology, whereby bad was attributed particularly to single mothers, remains. That is how society dealt with this. We have an obligation to take that burden off women's shoulders. They did not deserve that guilt or that burden, and it is our duty to apologise. The Government must apologise and then put in place a practical scheme to provide the most basic redress. The difficulties with a redress scheme are operational. The cost of the scheme is reflective of the involvement of the legal profession and many other aspects, primarily the failure to get the various congregations to pay what they should have paid. These are not arguments to prevent a redress scheme being set up now. We are talking about a limited number of people.

I will finish with the image I started with, namely, a woman who is over 80 years of age travelling to meet her 104 year old mother for the first time after six decades searching. I ask Members to keep that image in mind and then ask themselves, can we stand here and not do our duty?

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