Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Before I begin, I wish to take a moment to congratulate the most Irish US President since JFK, Joe Biden, and the Vice President, Kamala Harris, on their inauguration and wish them a successful term in office. In a speech yesterday Mr. Biden said "To heal, we must remember...it's hard sometimes to remember but that's how we heal".

The report, which is 3,000 pages long, is a map but there are pieces missing in what is a very complicated journey. The survivors should have been given printed copies of the report and enough time to read it. That was a serious disservice to the survivors, especially those who had given testimony and I hope this has been rectified now.

Careful analysis still needs to be done and it is important that we say that here today. It is only the beginning, only part of understanding what came before and only a partial account of what the women and children lived through. Noelle Brown, an adoption rights advocate who was born in Bessborough mother and baby home, believes her testimony was shoehorned into the report and that the transcript contained ten glaring inaccuracies. She criticised the report and the commission for failing to put the survivors at the centre of the investigation and described her involvement as a waste of time. That is not the survivor-centred approach that was promised and we need to fix that through our actions here and now.

It is important to applaud Catherine Corless for her work. Her research was instrumental in prompting the investigation. The commission interviewed, or gathered sworn affidavits from, more than 550 people during its investigation but some 56,000 mothers and 57,000 children are documented to have been resident in, or to have been born in, these homes. A number of homes failed to keep any records of the burials of children who died in them. The stories of rogue adoption agencies were not covered by this report. Records of thousands of well-documented adoptions do not appear in the report. We have read and seen in documentaries the stories of babies who were not on any aeroplane's manifest arriving from Ireland to the then Idlewild Airport in New York to be adopted but no records of these adoptions exist. Stories of women being dragged across the thresholds of their homes by clergy or gardaí were not enough for the commission to say that these women were forced into these homes. The records were not complete and these are not conclusions.

Unmarried mothers and their babies had many different experiences in the Ireland of the past. Some of these experiences involve institutions while others do not. Only a portion are included in this report. Only a portion of survivors were able to give testimony and only a portion of the story is told. There are valid criticisms of how those stories were related in the report. Some women never came out of those homes and some were abused so badly that they were scarred for life. Some survivors tell us that they were advised never to tell anyone of their shame. We can imagine that many still live their lives while holding onto dark secrets. Some go to their graves having never told a soul. It is just horrific.

While we can say that these women were badly treated, that horrible things happen and that children were taken, never to be heard from again, we need to know why such homes were set up and why Ireland demonised these women and babies and sent them to work in institutions which were paid for by the State. While we know that some 15% of babies born in these homes died, there a number of death certificates missing. Many children simply disappeared.

We have a lot of soul-searching to do and we owe it to the survivors to do it. Ultimately, human rights violations occurred and it is now vital for us to get a full picture and to ensure that any records which exist about any mother and baby facilities or any persons who took mothers into their private homes are found and that any stories of survivors or institutions that are not heard in the report are heard and documented. Such records should be handed over to the archives and anything which warrants criminal investigation should be handed over to the Director of Public Prosecutions. I welcome the fact that some such information has already been handed over. Continuous engagement with former residents and their representative groups will be paramount, as will public access to original State files.

I have written to the chief executives of Carlow County Council and Kilkenny County Council, the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Denis Nulty, and the HSE regarding their archives in the aftermath of this report. I requested that local bodies search their archives for documents pertaining to their county homes and their workhouses, including information about cemeteries and any other relevant information regarding Carlow and Kilkenny, which could be released to the relevant authorities. This is important to my constituents living here or further afield. It is vital that we now open up all State and church archives so that adopted people, survivors and natural mothers can read first-hand documents about the system as a whole, even if this opening of records is not, by itself, justice. Like Germany, we need to open these archives so that researchers can document what happened to women and children in 20th century Ireland. Only this type of transparency will offer solace to survivors.

This is not all we must do. It is also important that those who have contacted us in the few days since publication feel heard and that those who never spoke of what they went through feel heard through their silence. We need to immediately legislate to provide unconditional access to birth certificates for adopted people and access to records through the proper implementation of the general data protection regulation, GDPR. We do not need to give people's addresses out but people need to know that they can get their information. Denying people access to personal information about their early lives does not adhere to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that every child should have, as far as possible, the right from birth to know his or her parents and to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relation.

In October, misinformation spread that we were somehow sealing records of this kind for 30 years. That is not the case. When we voted, we voted to protect this vital and important information. I welcome the Minister's commitment to advance legislation on access to birth information and tracing. I very much look forward to working with him on this. It is urgent and I am glad that we are all able to work together on it.

The survivors are first and foremost in my thoughts. We must not place any barriers before anyone seeking redress for his or her time in a mother and baby facility. We should give redress to anyone who spent a week in these homes and anyone who arrived after 1973. This should be done case by case until everyone has received redress.

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