Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue and I compliment Deputy Cairns and the Social Democrats for introducing this motion.

As a Deputy living and based in Tuam, the Tuam mother and baby home has been a focus of attention over a number of years. The discovery of 796 babies buried in a mass grave is something that shocked the world. This watershed moment came when the very diligent work of Catherine Corless, a researcher, revealed what was happening in the site and what had happened in the past.

Over the years since I became a Deputy, I have met with and spoken to members of families who have had children or siblings there, or whose mothers were there in the Tuam home. I have also spoken to survivors of the home and have met some of the finest people that one would ever like to meet.

They built a resilience in themselves but at this stage they are beginning to tire because, when the discovery was made, there was an expectation that things would happen. I grant that former Minister, Ms Zappone, the current Minister’s predecessor, and the Minister himself have done enormous work in trying to get things done and it takes time to get things done. The redress scheme which is in place - I am receiving this feedback from many people representing mothers, babies and survivors, including the Tuam Mother and Baby Home Alliance - is one where there are issues which are not sitting comfortably with them.

The first thing people said to me when we had all of the discovery as to what happened in Tuam and in other places across the country was that the State should apologise. The State has apologised.

People were then talking about looking for supports to help people who had mental issues, were traumatised, and this trauma was re-visited on them when these events came into the public domain again. Many discoveries were made in families as a result of the good work Catherine Corless did.

There are three areas which are of serious concern. The first one, as one survivor said to me, is where these people had to serve their time of six months before they would be included in the scheme, as if one had to do one's apprenticeship first. The way it was put to me, which I believe is a good way, is that it is not so much how long one spent there, but what one's experience was when there. How did the person suffer and get on when in there and what legacy issues have been left with that person?

I do not think that is time-related. It is an experience, whether someone was a month or six years in a mother and baby home. There is something here that we need to address very urgently so that anybody who was in a mother and baby home will be considered to have had an experience for which they need support, which is a mild way of putting it, rather than cutting it after six months and saying they needed to have served that amount of time to get into a scheme. That is creating division and creating two tiers among people who are survivors or their families. That is very important.

I want to stress the area of medical trials. I note there were 13 vaccine trials over that period and over 43,000 children in Ireland were used for these trials, of whom almost 1,200 were from the mother and baby homes. In my estimation, we have had a lot of discussion in the last couple of weeks since the budget was announced around a levy on the construction industry to pay for the sins of people and of quarries that had the bad materials that caused mica or pyrite issues. However, we are not talking about a levy on anybody to try to pay for the redress scheme that is coming. It is important that we look at that. I think the Minister would get full support from across the House if a levy was put on the pharma industry to make sure it paid something towards what happened in the past. That would be more palatable than putting a levy on blocks and concrete at this time.

I know the Minister is talking to the religious orders. It is important that the discussions are concluded and the orders demonstrate in a tangible way that they are going to contribute towards the redress scheme - that it is not just talk and a soft landing. There are people who would say they have plenty of money. I do not know whether they have but I know they have plenty of property. At a time when we are looking for places in which to house people, they can be of enormous benefit to the State and they would also be doing something that would compensate for the ills of the past.

Looking to the future, no more than the situation in the construction industry, given the ills and how things went wrong in the past, the question is how we make sure things like this do not happen again. It is also about how we educate our children. I know the Tuam Mother and Baby Home Alliance is working with the university to try to create a teaching programme for today's children in order to educate them on what happened in the past and make sure it does not happen in the future. To be transparent is very important.

I have no doubt the Minister's efforts are 100% focused on getting things done, and done right. In my discussions with him, he is very much engaged and knows exactly what is going on. I appreciate all of that. However, there are a few things that we need to look at. It is not political or anything like that, but survivors need to know that they have the Minister’s backing, whether they were a day, a week, a month, six years or ten years in these mother and baby homes. I will leave it at that. I thank the Minister for his efforts.

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