Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We all share the Taoiseach’s view and all of us find it difficult to reconcile that Ireland, not in the dim and distant past but in the recent past, was such a hostile place for vulnerable women and their children. I said in my opening remarks that that is a shared view and the correct view. This, therefore, is not simply data. This is information and testimony that relates, as the Taoiseach set out, to real living people who have been traumatised and are on a journey in search of information and truth. They are in search of their own information, their own story, the stories of their love ones and, in some cases, the story of children that never emerged from these institutions and were buried in mass graves. We all know that.

The truth is the Minister has not engaged with the survivors. He has not engaged with their advocates. The truth is also that access for those people and their families has to be a tantamount concern of the State so the notion of sealing these records for 30 years, a time span in which surely many survivors of the mother and baby homes will have gone to their great reward and will never find the full truth and have access to their records, is unconscionable. Rather than defending this legislation, which the survivors, their advocates and their legal advisors all agree is unnecessary, unwarranted and causing distress, I ask the Taoiseach that we operate on a cross-party basis to resolve this matter to the satisfaction of the survivors in line with legal obligations. The Minister does not have to act as he is acting and I appeal to the Taoiseach to take a wider perspective.

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