Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Mick Barry.

I congratulate Deputy Cronin on her very insightful summation of the history of the counterrevolution this State conducted nearly 100 years ago, mainly against women but ultimately against women and children.

The commission on mother and baby homes was tasked five years ago with delivering an academic social history report. It interviewed over 500 people who lived or worked in the homes from 1922 to 1998. Over 70,000 women went to these homes. I do not wish to personalise anything but I just want to give a flavour of the extent of this issue. In the party I belong to, People Before Profit, we get a flavour of what went on from our own elected representatives. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett was born in a mother and baby home. Deirdre Wadding, a former councillor of ours in Wexford, had a child in Bessborough in 1981. She states they were not the darkest days but that the darkest moments she remembers were when she had to go into the laundry room, where she felt the shadow of the generations of the women who went before her. Mr. Gino O'Boyle, a councillor for People Before Profit in Sligo, lost his father at the age of 56. His father, Seamie, had been a councillor and had no access to his medical history. He was raised in Nazareth House, which is in the Sligo region. Since he had no access to his medical history, he was not aware that he had a congenital heart disease that would end his life early. Therefore, Mr. O'Boyle believes that, in a roundabout way, the deprivation of access to the records took his father away from him. Although the representatives I have mentioned are happy for their names to go on record, I am really mentioning them as a way of showing this is not a niche subject; it hits and touches to the heart tens of thousands of people. Not alone is the existing generation affected but the generations that follow will also be affected. It is not just the people who gave birth or grew up in a mother and baby home who are affected because their children and the children who come after them will be also. Therefore, this matter is extremely important. I realise that the Minister understands that and is on the right side of this but I want to explore what I cannot understand about what is going on.

My first point is that we keep hearing that if we do not pass this Bill tomorrow night when we vote, the archive assembled by the commission will be destroyed. This idea seems to have entered the Minister's head, and it is deeply embedded in the Taoiseach's head given what he said quite emphatically here yesterday. Is it the case that, as in "Mission Impossible", the archive will self-destruct after midnight on 30 October? How is that going to happen? If we accept it is a fact that the archive will somehow be destroyed after 30 October if we do not pass this Bill and the commission is dissolved, what should we be doing here tonight? What should be the first priority of this House and the Minister? I suggest it would be not to accept it as a fact that the archive must be destroyed. The first thing the Minister should do is introduce an emergency measure, an amendment to the relevant Act, that will ensure the commission's archive will endure and will not be destroyed. It gets ever more curious because, try as we might, we could find no reference in the 2004 Act that confirms that destruction must happen. It states what should happen with the records deposited with the Minister and what is and is not covered by data protection, freedom of information or national archives. Nowhere did we see a reference to the idea that, on the date of the ending of the commission, this State will have a group of civil servants surround a brasier to burn or shred the archive. Could the Minister please tell me where in law it states it must be destroyed at midnight on 30 October? If he can point that out to me, we should set about amending the relevant Act immediately.

We are rushing through legislation, as has been done time and again. We rushed through legislation on financial provisions quite recently. The legislation was 300 pages long. Even one of the Ministers speaking on it said he did not fully understand it. We rushed through the bank bailout legislation overnight and we have rushed through legislation on deadlines in law and regulations in a matter of hours without really knowing the implications but we must not do the same thing now. We do not seem to be able to prevent the imposition of a law that seems to be somewhere on the Statute Book that requires the archive to be destroyed. If the Minister can prevent that, he would be doing hundreds of thousands of people and their families, from the past, present and future, a great favour. This is one of the most shameful episodes in our history and the State has to stop the archive from being destroyed.

I believe the Minister is genuine in his statements but I am astonished he believes the narrative. If he is being told by the top echelon of civil servants that the archive must be destroyed if it is not sealed once it becomes his property, he should explain to this House and, more important, the public how that can happen. One would have to have lived on another planet not to understand why the survivors and their families are affected so badly by this and are so angry and outraged over the way in which this has proceeded. Even if we accept that the Minister is genuine in his concern, we are dealing with people who have seen a different side of this State than he has. It is the side of the State that has washed its hands of the responsibility for the safety of children. The individuals affected have seen a state collude in the abuse, rape and torture of the most vulnerable women and their children, and they have seen a state watch over the malnutrition of children. They have seen a state collude in the selling of babies and the absolution of past crimes of religious orders and church authorities for which they should have faced justice. I refer, in particular, to the Woods deal made by Fianna Fáil — the disgraceful redress deal struck with the Catholic Church. Is the Minister surprised by how the affected people and their families react to the news that the archive and documents of history will be sealed for 30 years or face destruction?

There is another question I want answered. I appreciated the Minister's briefing yesterday and that he is tabling some amendments that will go some way towards meeting the concerns of people who did not sign up to privacy, as in the case of former councillor, Deirdre Wadding. Ms Wadding said quite deliberately that she wanted her name on her story, as did many more like her who sat in a hotel with the former Minister, Katherine Zappone, to determine a sort of framework by which the commission would investigate matters. They wanted their names in the public arena but they were handed some silly leaflet — I hand out leaflets all the time, which the Minister will know is what agitators like me do — that has attached to it a great amount of legal importance that I believe it should not have. The Minister needs to answer the question in this regard.

The questions of privacy or secrecy seem to morph into each other. I asked the Minister yesterday what exactly will be sealed. He stated that personal stories, the evidence and a large number of records collected by the commission, many of which he said are already accessible, would be sealed. I then asked him whether they are all accessible and he said he does not know. If he does not, who the hell else will? If he is prepared to seal the records for 30 years without knowing exactly what is in them, it is outrageous. He must not do that. If he is not going to be able to do it, he should please table an amendment to whatever Act states civil servants can stand around a brasier and burn the files at midnight on 30 October. We cannot tolerate it and the Minister has to do something about it.

Let me respond to Deputy O'Dowd, who stated we are all in this together and that we could all sit down and bang our heads together. That is what we do as legislators and that is why we read legislation, come up with amendments, have arguments and try to stop Bills such as this one being rushed, as I and other Deputies did during the week. We are genuinely trying to stop the Minister from rushing this through but the whole apparatus around him seems to be determined to do so. The Taoiseach was adamant today that these records will be destroyed if we do not seal them for 30 years. I remind Deputy O'Dowd that the party he belongs to and the Fianna Fáil Party have overseen the legacy of this State. In the past 100 years, they have dominated the running of this State so they cannot just wash their hands of this matter and say we are all in this together and that we should come up with a universal solution. The universal solution is not to do what is proposed; it is to listen to the survivors.

The Minister is introducing emergency measures to prevent the archive being sealed or destroyed. I do not understand that notion. The Minister needs to come up with an amendment that would be acceptable to us and the survivors. Many of the survivors have died since the report was published. We welcomed the publication of that report. The Minister needs to come up with a means of defending those people by allowing the public to have access to all of the documentation. The Minister himself does not know what documentation will be sealed. That is an outrageous element of this that I cannot accept.

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