Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will address the issue of GDPR first, which was raised by Deputies Whitmore, Harkin and others. I have seen the article by Dr. Maeve O'Rourke and other articles have addressed this particular issue as well. My Department has engaged extensively with the Attorney General's office on this issue and the advice we have received, to which the Department is bound, is that the GDPR right of access to personal data set out in Article 15 of the GDPR is expressly prohibited by section 39 of the Commissions of Investigation Act. Section 39 of the Act prohibits that in accordance with Article 23 of the GDPR, which allows for exceptions to the GDPR in a range of circumstances including those relating to the administration of justice. It is on that basis that the Attorney General has advised my Department that the potential solution to the issue of access to information, which a number of Deputies have suggested, is not available. I understand that that is a contested view. I think Dr. O'Rourke would contest it, as would others. I accept that and that is why I said yesterday in the Dáil that I want to address this matter and broaden access. That will require a change in laws and I do not have the answer in respect of this issue today. I have agreed with the Attorney General that we will meet and discuss it and his office will take me through the argumentation on that point. I hope, with its agreement, that the Joint Committee on Children, Disability, Equality and Integration can bring in academics to voice the opposite perspective and see what we can do to agree on this. Contrary to what Deputy Pringle suggested, neither I nor my Department feel we know it all. We are looking for solutions but they will not be brought forward in this legislation.

Similarly, the 30-year rule stems from the 2004 Act and its interaction with the National Archives Act 1986. I accept that by sealing the archive we will create significant issues, to which Deputy Boyd Barrett has referred, where people want to find information about their lives which is limited by the existing law, under which this commission of inquiry was set up. What I have tried to do is to take one significant part, namely, the database constructed by the commission using records it had copied from other institutions, and take that out so it is immediately available and some of those gaps can be filled in for many people. I have committed to coming back and looking at the 30-year ceiling and seeing what we can do to address that, particularly for personal information.

In the context of the focus on the archive, it is also important to look at the actual commission report, which we will be receiving from my engagement with the commission on 30 October. The commission has spend the last five years looking at many of the absolutely shocking issues, such as the vaccine trials and all these individual and collective atrocities that took place across that period. The commission has spent the last five years investigating those. It is going to produce a report of 4,000 pages, with sections addressing each of the mother and baby homes and county homes that come within its remit. It will be making its assessment on the evidence it has scrutinised over five years. That report, which has been delayed on so many occasions, is going to give us so much of the information, which has been analysed. The judge who led this commission has a track record of undertaking incisive and sensitive investigations of other issues, including legacy issues of our country's past. That is why, throughout this process, my aim has been to ensure the commission can report when it has indicated it is ready to do so, on 30 October. The report will come to my Department and the Government and the Attorney General will have to review it. After review by the Attorney General it will be published by the State. I have made my commitment that I will see that done as quickly as possible because I think the survivors want to see that report and the analysis which has been undertaken over the past five years. That will provide many, though not all, of the answers survivors want. I have no doubt that the commission will set out recommendations on how the State responds to the things it has discovered and the conclusions it has made.

I look forward to working on implementing those specific recommendations.

The issue of a free vote requires a Cabinet decision, as does a decision to release the sixth interim report. It has not been released up until this point because of advice from the Office of the Attorney General. I want to come back to a number of points that Deputy Whitmore made and that others touched on, specifically in the context of archives and the amendment she tabled. Tying into the issue of the 30 year rule and the value of having material available, I absolutely see that. There is an archive with this commission report and with regard to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which was the subject of retention of records legislation in the last Dáil, which was extremely controversial and never addressed. There is also an archive for the McAleese report. All of these issues and the material in them, which speaks to dark periods in our nation's past, are contained there and we have to find some way to address that. I do not have the solution for Deputies today. What I have done and will continue to do is commit to seek ways to address that.

Two weeks ago, I met with Dr. Maeve O'Rourke and Deputy Gannon and we discussed the issue of an archive. The proposal relating to Sean McDermott Street was interesting. I need to find out more about it. I have been sent more details by CoLab subsequent to that meeting. It referred to various models. I know there is the model of what was done with the Stasi museum in eastern Europe as a potential model of how one can address a situation relating to a dark part of a country's history, with divisions created in families because of the decisions taken in East Germany and, in our own situation, decisions taken by members of families to direct a mother who is pregnant to go to a mother and baby home. Those are models that Ireland can learn from. I am committed to doing whatever I can as Minister to address that.

In the context of this legislation and the application of the 30 year rule, coming from the 2004 Act, we want to see the mother and baby homes commission of investigation's report delivered to get the information and analysis that has taken five years published as quickly as we can. We want to protect the database and ensure that it does not become sealed before we address issues about the 30 year rule. We want to ensure it is available for current tracing purposes that Tusla undertakes now and that it is available for future information and tracing purposes to be provided for in legislation which I have committed to bring to the Dáil in 2021. I believe this Bill is the way in which we can deliver on those objectives.

I have learned a lot from this process. I have learned about the importance of engagement in all these sensitive issues and the importance of better communication by me. Where I have failed to communicate either in this House or, more importantly, to survivors' groups, I apologise and I will work to do better on that. I genuinely believe that this legislation delivers on its central purpose of protecting that database and allowing its use to try to bridge those holes in information that exist because of what happened in Ireland.

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