Dáil debates

Wednesday, 24 February 2021

Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes: Motion [Private Members]

 

11:50 am

Photo of Bríd SmithBríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will be sharing time. I thank the Social Democrats for tabling the motion. I will start by talking about something that came to my attention last weekend. The building used by the mother and baby homes commission for its work has a granite plaque outside it with a small seabird known as the turnstone carved into it. The turnstone pokes its beak down and overturns stones, hence the name. The point of the plaque being there is that the building was once used as the headquarters of the Health Research Board and at the heart of any good research is the fact that no stone will be left unturned, and hence the relationship with the little turnstone. What has happened with this Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes is that many stones have been left unturned but in addition there has been an attempt to pour a pile of concrete on top of the truth. The Minister has been at the centre of controversy for almost the past five months because of the way the commission has both done its work and the report it has given us. I want to read an extract from a petition signed by hundreds of academics, lawyers, etc. It states:

We the undersigned note that the information gathered by the Commission of Inquiry is of immense importance, most especially the 500 survivor testimonies collected. However, the ensuing report is in no way the final word on the experiences of thousands of women and children who passed through Ireland's institutional architecture in the 20th century, and falls very far short of existing research in the field. Future research must endeavour to understand the full extent of the systemic discrimination against women which enabled this system of institutional harm, and continues to influence Ireland's policies today.

A couple of weeks after the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes published its report, a similar report was published by the assembly at Stormont but this was done quite differently. The latter report's conclusions were very different but the research methods used - going back to the turnstone and leaving no stone unturned - were quite different. The testimonies taken from women in Northern Ireland were used as evidence. The researchers involved were able to reach their conclusions once there were two or more similar testimonies. We have 550 recorded testimonies, many of which are very similar on the question of forced adoption, forced detention, abuse and the lack of supports. There are so many of these testimonies, given by many women, but the commission decided there is no evidence of that to which I refer. The commission used very different methodology from that used in Northern Ireland.

The conclusions from the investigations in the North are that there are questions to be answered. I believe there are still major questions to be answered here. We need to look at open access to all the records, including those still in church or religious control, relating to mother and baby homes and their management. We need the exhumation and the reburial of all the infants whose deaths went unrecorded and whose bodies are littered across the country, not just in Tuam and Bon Secours but also in Sean Ross Abbey and at many more locations at which an unknown number of dead babies are buried. No one knows who they are. That matter needs to be dealt with. I repeat the call that the locations at which they are buried are crime scenes and should be dealt with as such.

We need proper redress. At the heart of that redress must be the survivors themselves. I am not referring to the sort of redress that was given for the institutional abuse in the industrial schools or the Magdalen laundries; it must be redress that really matters, that takes everybody into consideration and that ensures that no stone is left unturned and that nobody is left behind. If the Minister can do anything, he has the power to do that in the coming months and years.

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