Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I very much welcome the debate on this report. I begin by suggesting that serious consideration be given to having a national remembrance day for all those who died in the mother and baby homes. It is something that should be considered over the next few months.

I want to touch on one or two issues that were raised earlier today. Back in 1974, the former President and then Senator, Mary Robinson, made an unsuccessful attempt to abolish the status of illegitimacy when she introduced a Private Members' Bill in the Seanad. In the early 1980s, I was involved in a broad-based campaign to abolish the status of illegitimacy. Our campaign faced opposition within my own party and, indeed, the wider community. We estimated that it would take us ten years to change the law. However, we continued to maintain the pressure and the Government of the day eventually published the Status of Children Bill in 1986, which became law in 1987. That was an important social and legal change in terms of children's rights.

From the foundation of the State in 1922, part of the Irish struggle was to establish an identity at home and abroad, with a strong emphasis on an Irish exceptionalism centred on family and Catholic moral values. Respectability was highly valued and, in effect, church and State worked together to establish a type of theocratic society where the dominant ideology was that of the Catholic Church. Throughout the period from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s, we continued to suffer economic hardship, population decline and high levels of emigration.

Emigration, rather than change, was also the safety valve for poverty, disease and death, especially infant deaths. The records of the register of births, deaths and marriages show that, during the first 50 years of the Irish State, the total number of infant deaths was 160,000. In fact, the worst year was 1944, when more than 5,000 infants died. The annual number of infant deaths began to fall substantially from 1948 onwards, but it was not until 1979 that the number of infant deaths fell below 1,000 in a single year.

The prevailing ideology for more than six decades was that single mothers and their children were seen as a threat to families. Society placed an extraordinary burden of guilt and shame on them. In most cases, the fathers of these children abandoned their responsibilities.

There is no doubt that the vast majority of women who entered mother and baby homes were coerced. Social workers referring to this group of women said:

There is a cohort of women about whom we know very little, and for whom we must have great concern. These are women who we, as social workers, believe were so shamed at the time of pregnancy and birth by the system and by those from whom they might have wished for support that they have never told anyone (including husband and other children) of the child or children to whom they gave birth and who live in fear of being found out and feeling their lives could be destroyed.

We must, however, balance their rights with the rights of those who want to establish their identity. The children who were born in mother and baby homes have rights. They received no support from the State from the day they were born and many did not even get a basic education. It is important that everything possible is done for them at the earliest possible date. They have travelled a difficult road and the State must now prioritise their needs in the best possible way.

I do not have a simple answer to the complex issues surrounding the balancing of rights to personal privacy and the right to information on personal identity. However, I would encourage everyone to read chapter 36 of the report, in particular from section 70 onwards, before they come to any conclusion on this complex issue. There is an understandable urge for immediate action and the media is reflecting this urgency. Yet, as we move to put right some of the wrongs previously committed, let us be mindful of the danger of hurting those who have already been badly broken.

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