Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

After the debate that took place on mother and baby homes in the Dáil, we, like many other Deputies, were overwhelmed by the response from people and the anger, anxiety and concern expressed, particularly by those who had been in those institutions and suffered abuse in them. I held an online public meeting which was attended by hundreds of people, many of whom had suffered horrific abuse and who were very angry. Their anger can only have been magnified by the information that has emerged since then that the Minister misled the House about the advice from the Attorney General. There was no advice. The suggestion was made that GDPR did not apply under the condition that it might jeopardise the work of this or future commissions, but that was not a basis under GDPR. Why did the Minister claim he got this advice from the Attorney General? Why did he claim something that simply was not true, when GDPR did not do as he suggested it did? He wrongly suggested that it applied in a certain way.

More generally, what was expressed by the survivors and those who had a stake in this matter was how angry they were that they were not consulted, were not part of the process and were not at the centre of the Government's considerations on how to deal with this matter.

Even with the matter of the proposed archive, what is said by the survivors is that this is the place that the narrative will be set about their lives and histories. They want to determine that narrative, not somebody else, and not so-called experts. They want to determine the narrative about their lives and histories. They want to have a real stake and involvement in how that archive is operated. Even now, after the admission following the Data Protection Commissioner's intervention in the debate, the Taoiseach or the Minister said that the right to people's information and history is not absolute. That is worrying. The Government misled the House about GDPR and then said that a person's right to identity and history is not absolute. All of that adds to the suspicion of a group of people who have been robbed of histories and identities and been abused. There needs to be an admission that what was said was wrong and the needs, wishes and direct involvement of the survivors of the process, and the people whose identity and history are at stake, need to be at the centre of how we deal with this matter.

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