Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I am sure he appreciates that there is considerable distrust among survivors and their representatives on this issue. Years of secrecy and denial, compounded by an adversarial system, have rightly left people sceptical about any Government announcement. That is understandable. I have to believe that the Minister was doing what he thought was right. However, it also seems that he was let down by his Department, or as the Irish Examiner put it, "left holding the bag". While the Minister is the public face of this affair, behind all of this is a Department that is unable to deal properly with these matters. The challenge is in how we respond to the situation now.

The Government needs to engage with survivors and earn their trust. It must recognise the deficiencies in the Department, even if the Minister cannot acknowledge them publicly. The Minister must immediately bring in experienced data protection law experts, including international expertise, to report to him as the data controller. This is an opportunity to start a new chapter in how the State treats survivors of mother and baby homes and of other forms of institutional abuse in Ireland. The mother and baby homes commission report will be published shortly. That will be a difficult time for everyone affected and a time for self-reflection as a society. It is so important that we get it right. I would like the Minister to respond in writing on the potential for the Attorney General to meet with the collaborative forum to discuss goings-on in recent weeks. The experts the Minister appoints must be experts in the GDPR specifically to help the Minister as the data controller to issue personal data access requests from the mother and baby homes commission and from other commissions concerned with institutional abuse.

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