Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Before I read my speech, I will first respond to a question from Deputy Connolly, which was also asked earlier by Deputy Devlin, about copies of the report. In short, approximately 200 hard copies of the abridged report have been sent out to date. Of those, 75 were posted on the day of publication to the survivors and their representatives and to select Members, Deputies and Senators. Since then, 123 requests for the abridged version have been received to date and a copy has been posted to all of those who requested them. There have been 247 requests for copies of the full report. They are in stock and the distribution company is organising the distribution at the moment. Any of the survivors who would like to get a copy can contact the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the report will be sent directly to them at no cost whatsoever. I hope that answers the question.

It is my second time also to contribute on this matter. I welcome the opportunity to address the House a week after a landmark moment of truth for the State and for the people. I thank everybody who brought responses, stories and feedback from their constituents into the Chamber today and for the ongoing engagement with the survivors, which is critical. Many questions have been asked throughout the past three and a half hours and I do not have the answers to all of them, but the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has sat through the entire debate, and between him and the Department, answers will go back to Deputies.

There is a strong onus on us now not to do further damage to a community of people who have been so desperately let down time and again. To speak about survivors as one group, a singular entity, and to suggest that all of them have had the same experiences and currently have the same needs and desires is yet again to ignore them, demean them and refuse to acknowledge their precise individuality. During my years holding clinics in Galway East I have met so many survivors from mother and baby homes and county homes across the constituency. No two of them have had the same experience and no two of them have the same ideas about what redress means to them. There are as many stories as survivors. We have an obligation as a Government to listen and to meet their needs. We are going to do so in the following ways. The most common thread we have heard is that people want to share their stories, to tell the horror and trauma of their past and to be believed. That is the reason the commission was set up in 2015 and its report has now been published online without editing or redaction.

I spent the past week listening to the responses of survivors and their families and I have no doubt that it must have been a gruelling, exhausting and traumatising week for them all. While many were happy to be moving into the next phase of addressing the past, many others were upset at the tone and language used in the report. We have heard in the Chamber today that it was awful that some of the witnesses felt that their stories were misrepresented or that the lack of evidence reported made them feel they were not believed or that they were lying. I assure them that nobody thinks they were lying.

I would like to highlight some of the stories. One woman's son was three and a half years of age when a nun said to her, "It's happening." She did not have time to say goodbye but she had enough time to run up to the top of the stairs to see her son as he was being driven away. It broke her heart that he was parted from her. Another woman was brought into a shop in town and told to sign a document that was half covered. What she was actually signing was an adoption and when she returned to the home the baby was gone. Another witness told the committee that she had told a nun of her plans to go to England with her baby. The nun responded, "That doesn't happen here. You'll do what we tell you and that's it. You're not keeping that baby. You're going nowhere with that baby. You're going home and the baby is going somewhere else." An 18-year-old had to hand over her baby like a parcel while her father forced her to sign her name on adoption papers. One woman said she was told to shut her mouth and sign. In the case of another woman, when her child was three weeks old, a nun walked into the nursery and snatched her baby from her. This is the language used to describe these adoptions: "snatched", "ordered to give away", "made to hand over", "gave me no choice", "without consent". There is no doubt that these are simply replacement words for being forced. We believe their stories.

The language used by the commission is officious and technical. The evidence, perhaps, that the commission means is the documentation that the nuns and organisations should have kept to assist people in tracing their lineage and their families. If we take evidence as meaning documentation and physical evidence, it is a hard thing for us to get our heads around. It is possible for two conflicting things to be true at the same time. It is possible for someone to have been forced to give up their baby for adoption and it is possible that there would be no evidence of that. It is possible for someone to have been abused and for there to be no evidence of that. Unfortunately, the people who committed those acts must have known what they were doing was wrong.

When people commit wrongdoing, they very rarely keep robust documentation and records of their actions. We believe these women and we want to help them.

One of the areas not discussed in the public arena to date, and again today, is the matter of those people with disabilities and how they were treated in mother and baby homes. Much can be learned by the chapter title under which this matter is dealt, Chapter 31: Discrimination. It highlights the extent of the limited knowledge of the professionals at the time, as well as the wider struggle of State and society with how to support those with disabilities. The language used at the time is hard to read, with women or children with disabilities often referred to as "slow", "backward" or "mentally deficient". These people were truly "othered". The commission notes that regardless of one's place of birth, incidence of discrimination for those with a disability was significant. The commission adds that it heard no representation by or on behalf of people with disabilities, who it states were probably the mostly badly affected by being in an institution.

To all who passed through these mother and baby homes I must say this evening that the unrelenting darkness through which they have lived, the shadow cast over them, the lack of information and the lack of acknowledgement is something we want to end. I am conscious that it is disappointing that the report does not answer all the deeply personal questions about burial arrangements for many of the children who died in these institution and in many cases the burial locations remain unknown. It is my deep regret that we cannot provide all the information needed.

The commission finds that many adopted people think there is considerably more information about them in institutional and other records than is the case. Having examined the records closely, the commission states that the information is very limited in most cases. There are no burial records for a number of large institutions, where significant numbers of infants were known to have died, including at Tuam, Bessborough, Castlepollard and Sean Ross Abbey. It breaks my heart that this information is not there and it is another failing on the part of the institutions to do the right thing and document the decisions made to allow people to know who they are and who were their mothers and siblings.

We are aware that this does not come close to healing the pain of those involved but the Government is committed to creating a dignified remembrance and memorialisation where there is currently nothing in place. As a Government, we are fully committed to legislating for people's rights to access information that is there.

A person's right to identity is an important human right. Medical information and adoption records compiled at the time of adoption should be made available, and the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is working intensively with the Attorney General on the development of information and tracing legislation to support a person's right to access birth and early life information. The Government has agreed to make this a priority. The Minister is also working with the Department to establish a restorative recognition scheme for survivors, which will involve suggestions from survivors that will make a real and measurable difference.

It would be remiss of me not address the matter of Galway County Council. Next week Galway County Council has its monthly plenary meeting and I am horrified to think No. 8 on its agenda happens to be statements on mother and baby homes. The whole county council meeting should be given over to apologising to those who were in that mother and baby home. We have heard Deputy Connolly's contribution and both of us are from Galway and we understand much of what went on in the mother and baby homes because we have spoken with the affected people. I was very disappointed to learn about this last night and I appeal to Galway County Council to amend what it has set out. I also know my colleague in the Seanad, Senator O'Reilly, has raised the matter as well and Galway County Council should follow the Government's lead in apologising if it wants to bring about change and give a good example.

See this speech in context