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

As somebody who is a political activist, but also somebody who was adopted and born in a mother and baby home, I have very mixed feelings about this debate and report. I suspect that is true of many survivors and those who went through mother and baby homes. In my case, my outcome was relatively benign in that I was adopted by a wonderful family and I was lucky enough eventually to be reunited with my biological family. However, I am acutely aware that for many other people the outcome was not so benign.

I am really upset that at a time when women and children who suffered at the hands of the church and State finally had their turn to have their voices heard, to reclaim their history and identity, to change the narrative and to put the people who lived that history back in their rightful place at the centre, that has not happened with this process.

Survivors' fears that official and political Ireland would bring its influence to bear on the history, the story and the narrative, and put its interests first, have been realised. I refer to this report, and the commentary surrounding it. It is incredibly disappointing that this has happened after we had the debacle in respect of the legislation and the seal on records before Christmas. Surely, warnings were given to the Government and to the people putting the report together that this must not happen. Yet, that is exactly what has happened.

Even before the debate last week during Leader's Questions, following the publication of the report my gut instinct led me to say that I thought the report I had read was "beginning to look like a sham, an insult and a whitewash". I wondered then whether I was being unfair. I realise now that my gut instincts were right and our fears have been realised. I say that based on how much more we have now read about what happened and how much more we have heard from survivors. We have heard much more about how the testimonies taken were not given weight, were not considered evidence and were not even transcribed accurately. We have heard survivor after survivor saying that this report is not what they expected, not what they wanted and not the vindication they expected.

The point about this whole situation is that the official Ireland was never going to admit its crimes. The report relied on official records, when it was precisely official Ireland - church and State Ireland - which presided over the shadow State and the abuse and neglect. Everything was centred on the obscene concept of "legitimacy". What an offensive term that is. How could any report try to disperse that obscene concept onto people in general, and onto fathers and families, when it was on the Statute Book until 1987? It was written in as part of the registration of mothers and when babies were born in the homes. Some were characterised as "legitimate" and some as "illegitimate". If people were deemed illegitimate, of course, then it was permissible to treat them as less than human and to allow them to suffer malnutrition, sickness and burial in unmarked graves. The histories and narratives of those people could be stolen, distorted and twisted with a perverse ideology driven by the priorities of politicians and religious orders and institutions. That is the reality. This report whitewashes that reality and insults the survivors.

I believe the Minister when he says he wants to put that right, but this process has failed so far. The Minister now needs to put the survivors, and the real voices and histories which have been denied, at the centre of the process of redress. He also needs to put them at the centre of efforts in respect of the archive and all the supports necessary to right the terrible wrongs which were done to the people in the mother and baby homes.

See this speech in context