Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is hard for many to understand why one of the mother and baby home commissioners participated in an Oxford University seminar yesterday to discuss the commission's report but would not come before the Oireachtas committee. I welcome and totally agree with what the Tánaiste said that there is no excuse for this. I have written to the committee requesting that it invite them in again.

It is harder to understand how the findings of the commission's report were in so many cases completely contradictory to the testimony of survivors, for example, that there was no evidence of forced adoption. It is impossible to understand how the Government has not rejected the commission's report. The Tánaiste stated that if the commission discounted testimonies, it is a problem. I can tell the Tánaiste that it did. It referred to witness testimonies as contaminated. The commissioner yesterday described State files as an utter disgrace and local authority files as another disgrace, but they were not considered contaminated. Will the Government repudiate the report and produce the underlying archive to give survivors the administrative files and their personal data? We need the dedicated archive. Crucially, we need to repudiate the report. Survivors were denied the archive detail. This report is rewriting people's lived experience and Irish history.

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