Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It can become overwhelming when we stop to consider the full enormity of what we are here to discuss today. That enormity is that for four fifths of just over the 100-year history of this Republic, a collusion of church and State saw fit to incarcerate en massewomen and girls of all ages and backgrounds, and young working-class boys, who committed no wrong other than to be in the way of a cruel war of morality that was waged upon them. This same collusion of church and State permitted vaccine trials to be performed on children within their horrid form of care. The church, with the full facilitation of the State, stole babies from their mothers, often at birth, and sold those children for profit to families in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, leaving a longing in those mothers that I cannot even begin to comprehend. The Minister must have met those mothers. These women went to convents day in, day out asking if they could have their children back. The Minister must have met them; I have. We are here today to discuss the form of redress that derived from a report that included, and let me be clear, false incarceration, beatings, medical experimentation and kidnap to name but some. These were crimes, regardless of who committed them or what cloak of religious order they wore. These heinous acts are crimes and the Government is saying nobody is culpable. It is not even close to being acceptable.

More cruel than the fallacy that nobody was to blame for these horrors is the Taoiseach's assertion that society itself was to blame. Let me challenge that. That is just an ahistorical version of history that shifts culpability from the State and the church for their very direct complicity in these crimes. When I say, "the State", I am very much referencing the same parties with which the Minister is in government today. The Taoiseach's party, Fianna Fáil, first came to Government in 1932 and although the counterrevolutionary abdication of State responsibility for basic provision to the church had already begun under Fine Gael's forebears in Cumann na nGaedheal, the grip of John Charles McQuaid's Catholic Ireland was strengthened by de Valera’s Fianna Fáil. Society as a whole does not hold or bear responsibility for that. At no stage were the people of Ireland consulted about the transfer of State provision in health, education and welfare to the church. They were not consulted. More than that, society was never consulted and was not an architect in the system of containment that resulted in mother and baby homes, Magdalen laundries, asylums and institutions. People certainly may have been scared of ending up in one but they were not complicit in that.

At its very basis, that is what these ex gratiaschemes are about. This is about the form of history we allow ourselves to tell about the history of Ireland. It suits the narrative of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and others to have a very plain, linear narrative in this country with regard to our history that at one point: we took up arms against an overseas oppressor and that was the extent of it. We can fight over who owns it. Rather, what did independence mean for the average working-class woman, man and child in this country? That is what these ex gratiaschemes are about. The Government is going to pay women who suffered extraordinary wrongs. The Government is going to pay them and for that payment, it is going to demand that they seek no more justice or truth. The absolute antithesis of restorative justice is the retraumatisation of victims. The Minister has met those victims, as have I. They are telling the Minister that the system being inflicted on them, whereby they will get paid and must seek no more justice, is cruel. It is simply not acceptable. It cannot be. We have to be better than that.

The Minister has become a custodian of this history because of his place in government at the minute and because of the responsibility that has been laid before him. We ask the Minister today whether he will become complicit in that. Does he just become another brick in the wall of that cruel system of containment; that architecture of horror that locked people up who did no wrong en massein this country? Does he allow them to tell their truth or does he tell them to seek justice or truth no more? He is a custodian of that now and he gets to be responsible for those histories.

Let me ask the Minister about the children who have been excluded from these schemes because they did not spend six months or longer in the mother and baby homes. Did those children not suffer forced family separation or disappearance? Did those children, who are now adults, not suffer psychological trauma and harm? Did they not also suffer from vaccine experimentation, lack of supervision, the vetting of their families, physical harm and injury? If a child was in an institution for five months, did he or she not suffer that trauma? Do they not also get to seek justice and get a form of reparation?

We have to wrap our arms around the women and children who have suffered in this country, in the true history of this country, not drag them through a system and tell them to be silent. We have to be better than that. Our Republic does not emerge while we cover up the horrors of our past. The Minister is now responsible for that. I ask him to be better.

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