Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies Michael Collins and Michael Healy-Rae.

This report proves that history is a living thing, and unless we face it honestly, peace and the beginning of reconciliation will continue to evade us. I also welcome the apologies made by the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister. I listened to their speeches. I also acknowledge today's apologies by the Sisters of Bon Secours and the Archbishop of Tuam and the apology yesterday from the Archbishop of Dublin. It is right well that they may apologise. I am shocked and disgusted, as are many of the survivors and their families and the supporters who stood with them in recent years to get to the truth and to get some semblance of justice.

The scurrilous and scandalous leaking of this report at the weekend to a Sunday newspaper was despicable and disgraceful. When a previous report was leaked when he was in opposition, the Taoiseach was furious. I hope he will demonstrate the same fury now in rooting out the evil person who maliciously leaked this report to the media before any of the victims could see it. It is shocking. We have too much of that going on today, with spin doctors all over the place scurrying around for bits of information and not minding how sensitive, hurtful or wrong that information is. Those are highly paid positions and the people responsible should be rooted out.

The pages of this report cry out with pain and anguish. They tell us of the treatment of women and children that no one here would accept for one minute, not one second, if it was one of our children, a daughter, or any relation. Not for one second would we accept that treatment and nor should we. However, we must accept, painfully, that compassion was often absent in the one place where it was needed most, namely the family, as well as in many of the mother and baby homes. Some good people worked in those homes, but, shamefully, many people working there lacked compassion. That was especially the case in institutions where Christianity was most needed, and that was truly lamentable and shocking. This is not to say that all families treated their daughters, children or grandchildren with such coldness and lack of compassion; they did not. The vast majority of people and families in the period covered by this report were hard-working and decent family people trying to eke out a living and educate their children.

This was post independence and post World Wars. They were very harsh times with little mechanisation or anything else on farmlands or in the country. The balanced nature of the report makes that clear.

I thank all the people who worked on the report. It is such a detailed document. I have not read it all and it would be wrong to say I had. I have only read bits of it. It is a huge job of work and has been eagerly awaited by the victims. I hope they get some solace from it, that we go forward in a properly chartered roadmap and that we have redress and reconciliation.

As I said, the vast majority of people at the time did their best. The report bears that out. However, it remains true to say that something like a conspiracy of silence existed in our communities and our nation when it came to the issues involved. That is very evident. It was a silence that produced endless grief and pain. Courage was present but so too was a willingness to look the other way. We must accept that. Blind eyes were turned all over the place. Apologies, however important they are, feel inadequate, yet they must be made.

This report is also marked by an awareness of complexity and the inability to portray one single group as the villain of the piece. The inaction of the State, the conditions in the county homes and the role the county councils and courts played in the entire sorry saga are also highlighted, and rightly so. There was fault and, in many cases, grievous fault. How can we remedy this pain? How can we bring healing and restitution to all involved? These will be important questions for us to consider. Every life is precious, every life counts and every life deserves the greatest opportunity to flourish. This did not happen for so many and for so long. We must do better or history will judge us as harshly as it has judged our predecessors, and rightly so.

See this speech in context