Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As we debate this Bill, the people of Ukraine are suffering the brutal invasion and bombardment by Russian forces. We are seeing the deaths of children and civilians. That makes us all reflect on the importance and privilege of being able to debate legislation in a debating chamber in a parliament in a peaceful democratic republic. We must all reassert the true value of democracy. The war in Ukraine reminds us all not to take that for granted. I wanted to preface my remarks with that. I know that feeling is shared across the House. I did not get to speak in the debate on Ukraine last night but I will be speaking later in the debate on Palestine with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and will express that view again. My colleague, Deputy Howlin, spoke passionately in support of, and in solidarity with, the people of Ukraine in the debate last night, as did many others in a genuinely cross-party manner. I acknowledge that.

I welcome the opportunity to speak for the Labour Party on this important Bill and to express our support for it. I express the sincere sympathies of the Labour Party and my colleagues to the survivors of Tuam and other mother and baby homes, and their families. I also pay tribute to the tireless work of Ms Catherine Corless who did so much to uncover the fact and true extent of the burials at Tuam. Her work has been crucial to the development of our knowledge on this issue.

Like other speakers, I have had immense levels of correspondence from constituents and survivors, who have been so courageous as to get in touch with us to share their personal stories and those of their families. I thank them for this because it really does enrich our knowledge and understanding as legislators when we come to look at Bills in this area. We legislators must, therefore, do right by survivors by ensuring the swift passage of legislation to address the outstanding issues that remain following the scandalous treatment of women and children in mother and baby homes throughout the 20th century, until as recently as the late 1990s.

I recognise the Minister's commitment to bringing this legislation forward swiftly. I also acknowledge the immense work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, led by Deputy Funchion. I have been fortunate to work with her and colleagues on the committee in recent months. Indeed, we are engaging later this evening on amendments to the Birth Information and Tracing Bill. A great deal of work has been done by committee members, including Deputy Cairns and others, on the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill before us today. I thank my Labour Party colleague, Deputy Sherlock, who was our representative on the committee for that process. I acknowledge that the Minister, as he said, has made changes to the Bill in the light of some of the recommendations made by the committee. That is very important and welcome.

The purpose of the Bill is to provide a legal basis to enable some closure, finally, for survivors and the families of the children and babies who are buried at Tuam. Much of the Bill is technical, the aim being to create the statutory framework to enable exhumation and excavation to take place. The need for legislation was made clear upon publication of the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and certain related matters. On Tuam, we might reflect that the commission found there were 978 child deaths, 80% of them of children under a year old and 67% involving infants aged between one and six months. These are horrendous figures. We know the worst years were 1943 to 1947, when many of those deaths took place. It is very difficult to fathom the scale of what happened when we read the figures in the report but it becomes clearer when we think of each of those human stories and the impact on the mothers and families.

When the report was published, there was unity in this House in calling for its recommendations to be given effect as quickly as possible. I am conscious that many of those who have contacted us are older persons who are worried they may not be alive to see the culmination of the legislative process. It is important that we deal swiftly not only with this Bill but also the Birth Information and Tracing Bill, which, as I said, we are debating in committee later, and with establishing the new redress scheme. I look forward to working constructively with the Minister and on a cross-party basis to ensure this key package of legislative measures is brought into place as swiftly as possible, albeit that we need to ensure the proposals are given adequate legislative scrutiny.

I welcome the Minister's response to the report of the children's committee and the changes made as a result, including the removal of restrictions on the jurisdiction of the coroner and the alignment of the forensic investigative process with international standards. There are still some concerns being expressed to us by survivors that the language of the Bill may mean there are unnecessary limits placed on the coroner. It would be good to hear more about how that is being addressed in the Bill.

Another positive development is the expansion of the survivor engagement provisions. I very much welcome the expansion of family participation in DNA identification in particular. We need to ensure such engagement is not just expanded through legislative provision but also through the processes that are put in place. The Minister has spoken about the public information campaign, which is very welcome, but we need more detail about it and about mechanisms for the involvement and engagement of survivors and families. As we all would acknowledge, there have been some unfortunate breaches of trust with survivors, such as the manner in which details of the commission's report were leaked, for example, and the initial inadequacy of communications with survivors who did not or do not have access to IT. There also were issues around misrepresentations of testimony in the report. All of these issues can and should be addressed. The public information campaign is a very welcome measure in the Bill because it will provide a better framework for consultation and involvement of stakeholders and survivors.

We know a large number of people are affected by the issues dealt with in the Bill. A total of 56,000 mothers and 57,000 children passed through the mother and baby homes under investigation by the commission. Thousands more were resident in other institutions outside its terms of reference. We have spoken before in this Chamber about the shocking mortality rate for babies, not just at Tuam but also in the other institutions. It is shocking indeed that one in seven, or 15%, of babies, numbering 9,000, died before their first birthday in the homes covered by the report. Within the confidential committee section of the report, we learned of the true extent of abuse suffered by survivors, the widespread practice of forced labour and the extensive practice of coerced or forced adoption. We will be debating some of those issues at the committee this evening.

In this regard, I note the powerful contribution of Carmel Cantwell, who spoke to Brian O'Connell on the "Today with Claire Byrne" show yesterday about her experience. They discussed a map dating from the early 1950s that labelled a site in the Bessborough home as a children's burial site. That is worth mentioning because this Bill, as the Minister said, has import beyond Tuam, albeit the latter is the main focus. We are all very conscious of some of the revelations about Bessborough as well. This map labelled a particular site as a burial site but, listening to those who appeared on the show, it appears there was no physical or documentary evidence of burials at the site. This sort of discrepancy is very upsetting and concerning for families, who naturally will wonder what it means when there is a burial site marked on a map. It is the sort of issue that was taken up so powerfully by Catherine Corless. In her appearance on the programme, Ms Cantwell spoke about her brother, William, who died and was labelled as an unclaimed baby, despite this not reflecting the reality of their experience. This very powerful interview gave a name to, and identifying details about, just one of the babies who apparently died at Bessborough. As I said, when we look at figures, we can sometimes forget the individual, human stories behind them.

On the survivor engagement point, we are hearing from survivors and those affected, such as Ms Cantwell, that the voices of the mothers who went through the homes must be at the forefront and that all facets of the State response must be survivor-led. Is it possible to broaden the parameters of qualifying family members in the legislation to ensure they are as inclusive as possible, in recognition of the complexities of families, particularly in the context of how much time has elapsed since many of these deaths took place? I am conscious that we are all being contacted not only by people who were residents in homes but also those who may be cousins of babies buried there, for instance, or who know, through family folklore or history, that this happened. They should be brought within the scope of the legislation.

It is sensible that the Bill reflects the period examined by the commission but we are all conscious that there are concerns remaining about the exclusion of some survivors from the proposed redress scheme because they were incarcerated in institutions outside the remit of the commission institutions, such as Temple Hill, Westbank, St. Anne's, Cork, Mount St. Joseph's and others. We also know there are issues around qualifying criteria in the redress scheme, which we will debate in due course when the legislation is brought forward Again, I ask the Minister to consider broadening the scope of persons covered by that legislation. Indeed, I wrote to him last month to ask that he revisit the matter.

I am very glad to hear this Bill will not prevent future inquests or investigations into deaths at Tuam. While it is important that the primary focus of the Bill should be to give closure to families and reunite them, it is also important that we are careful not to repeat mistakes of the past, whereby survivors and families have felt re-traumatised when legislation has had the consequence of preventing them from seeking further justice or speaking out about the awful abuse they faced. I have in mind the residential institutions redress scheme, for instance, where that sort of gagging clause became very contentious and difficult for many survivors.

There are a number of other concerns about the legislation, which we may address further on Committee Stage. Advocates have lamented the retention of the controversial provision empowering Ministers unilaterally to decide whether a site is to be exhumed and investigated or if it will be subject solely to a process of memorialisation. There are differing views among families and survivors about different sites and which is the most appropriate process. The key issue is to ensure adequate communication with the families affected to avoid further distress to the many people who may be seeking different outcomes from legislative interventions on these sites. I would like to hear from the Minister about that difference between those who might prefer simply to see a site memorialised and those who wish to see it fully exhumed and excavated. These are difficult questions to address.

I would like to raise a specific question brought to me by the Separation, Appropriation and Loss Initiative, which notes that the redrafted Bill refers to institutional burial grounds and the definition of "institution" within section 2 relates to premises occupied by women or children or both. The Separation, Appropriation and Loss Initiative is asking whether this will cover illegal exhumations and reburials of women from institutions, which is another key point because we know that there may be scenarios that have, as yet, remained uncovered and that may need to be covered by this legislation. We are all conscious that Catherine Corless's tireless work uncovered so much that had been unknown or only guessed at previously and that there may still be further revelations to come. Without the key role that she played and that other historians and archaeologists have played, we would not know, for example, about reported burials in Bessborough or the horrendous mass grave uncovered at Tuam.

I want to again acknowledge Catherine Corless’s work and the work of other historians. In particular, I want to acknowledge Catherine Corless. Her work in taking out the death certificates of each of the 796 children who died at the Tuam mother and baby home gave rise to such a powerful sense of outrage at this evidence beyond doubt of a culture in which institutional and structural abuse of women and children was widespread throughout the country. The State owes her a great debt of gratitude. The Minister rightly said that what happened at Tuam is a stain on our national conscience and people like Catherine Corless have been so important in uncovering those stains. Throughout the past decades there are those who have shown incredible strength, resilience and determination in telling their stories. They have faced up to a powerful State and church that have been happy to maintain the status quoand culture of silence that we have often spoken about. I reiterate my gratitude and that of my Labour Party colleagues to those activists. I look forward to further debate on this Bill on Committee Stage.

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