Dáil debates

Wednesday, 14 September 2022

Proposed approval by Dáil Éireann of the Institutional Burials Act 2022 (Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam) Order 2022: Motion

 

7:25 pm

Photo of Roderic O'GormanRoderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their contributions. They were absolutely right to recognise the pivotal role Catherine Corless has played in this. We would not be here today but for her dogged persistence in highlighting what happened in Tuam. The Deputies are right to credit her with dragging the Irish State to this place today.

The passing of this legislation was a lengthy process, one that involved very substantive engagement with the joint committee and significant amendments in both the Dáil and the Seanad.

7 o’clock

When I visited the site at Tuam last year, I also met four separate groups on the day. Their key request related to the coroner and removing the exclusion of the coroner's jurisdiction that was originally in the legislation. We removed it because we heard what people had said. The reasons that officials or I put forward, that it was not as big a concern, did not matter. It was a concern for survivors and we acted on that concern. We made other changes in the legislation. Deputy Connolly referred to Dr. Niamh McCullough. I am grateful for the advice she gave to our Department, particularly about strengthening the processes that will take place following the excavation of the site. This post-recovery analysis gives us a better opportunity to return sets of remains to family members. There is a clear requirement written in the legislation that work taking place on this site must be done to an international forensic standard. I hope that provides some comfort to families in Tuam and potentially in other sites about the type of work that will take place. In the amendment process, we also added an advisory board which will be convened and will have survivors or relatives of residents of the institution. It also has an opportunity to involve the wider sector, as Deputy Canney said.

It is important to remember that this legislation is not site-specific. It makes provision for interventions in other sites as well. I have engaged with relatives of people at the Bessborough site. My Department intervened in a planning application last year for work to take place on the site of the presumed children's burial ground there. In August of this year, I visited Sean Ross Abbey and met relatives there. We discussed their concerns about the potential wider burial ground there. We are working with survivors to get a resolution relating to that site.

Deputy Connolly mentioned the redress legislation. This legislation has been worked on by my Department over the summer and I will bring it to Cabinet in October to seek approval for the final Bill and to bring it rapidly through the Houses and the committee so that we can provide redress to family members. The Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth has written to me about the testimonies before the confidential committee and I will provide a comprehensive response. The Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth will consider that.

When the comments were made at the lecture in Oxford about the treatment of the testimonies, we all received correspondence from survivors. What shone through most clearly in that correspondence was the concern from the 550 survivors who had given testimony that, having gone to the effort and, in many cases, trauma of reliving what happened, their words were nowhere. We know their testimonies are not in the commission's report. There are just brief extracts of them. Prior to that, my officials had secured the tapes of those interviews. As we know, those tapes were meant to be deleted but we secured them and have them now. I am seeking to provide an opportunity to those that gave testimony so that their words are not just hidden away on a tape somewhere but are actually part of the record, whether they wish to express those words themselves or they wish to use the tapes as evidence of that record. I am conscious that there are other survivors who did not participate in the confidential committee who may wish to have their personal stories of what happened to them in institutions also expressed on the record. That is what I am attempting to provide for survivors in the proposals that I am bringing forward. I will write to the committee in more detail and the committee can decide about the next steps. That is the proposal that I will present.

I thank Deputies for their consideration of the motion today. My Department and I will work to ensure, assuming assent of the Dáil and Seanad, that the agency can be set up as quickly as possible and that this essential work in Tuam can proceed as quickly as possible to provide that small measure of comfort to families at the end of this process.

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