Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact the Government will not oppose the motion tonight. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has heard the statements from the Deputies here tonight. They are true and we have all known people who have been directly affected. Obviously, the Minister has been in direct contact with people. However, when you listen to witness statements and to a woman saying how she breastfed her child while facing a wall and for her to have that child torn from her breast and for it to have taken nearly 45 years to see him, tell me that is not traumatic.

The State, the Church, pharmaceutical companies, the legal profession and undertakers were mentioned. We are not finished with this at all yet. People are coming forward all the time. I would ask for the utmost urgency in trying to get some kind of redress.

Many people have told me survivors are very anxious to get advanced medical cards. They are getting old and frail. The cost of dental work and other medical procedures is extremely expensive. They are only looking for a bit of quality of life. They have gone through their suffering. They are going through the pain now. Yes, many of them wanted just to tell their stories. They were not looking for a pat on the back but they needed to off-load. Yet, here were are again. Listening to other speakers earlier, I thought, my God, we have had many dark times in our history but this is something that we should be really ashamed of because we let our own people down. We let mothers, children and grandparents down. If we cannot stand up today and admit that if it was a collective thing, we should be all in it together and sort it out. We have a responsibility to do that and I ask that be done urgently.

See this speech in context