Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is significant that quite a number of Deputies have ignored their speaking slots in respect of such an important topic. I will leave that at that.

The Minister said in his speech: "The scheme will recognise the time spent and the harsh conditions, emotional abuse and other forms of mistreatment, stigma and trauma experienced by people while resident in a mother and baby or county home institution." What is missing there is "some people". The scheme will recognise some damage experienced in some institutions and will give some money. That is very important. Let us look at the context of what we are speaking about. I am glad I have extra time in my slot to elaborate a little on this. Let us see where we have come from.

I think it was in 2012 that Catherine Corless, local human rights activist and historian, started looking into her family tree and began to discover various things. We are extremely grateful to her. That is ten years ago if my sums are right. I will come back to her.

Prior to that, we had many indications from many different places that something was very wrong. I come from a city of institutions, Galway city. The Magdalen laundry was within a stone's throw of my house. We had the Lenaboy industrial school for girls, and for boys we had St. Joseph's Industrial School - brothers and sisters. I am aware of that personally: sisters here, brothers there, never to see each other again but within less than a half a mile from each other. Then, going out to Connemara, we had another industrial school for boys, and in Clifden we had the industrial school for girls. I have not touched on the mother and baby homes in Tuam and Loughrea. Galway was a city and a county of institutions, like other counties all over the country. That was part of the architecture of containment, the phrase used so eloquently by Professor Smith from Boston University, as I understand it.

The other day I read out a piece in recognition of Ireland's first Constitution. Now, 100 years later, we are looking back on a century of containment, mostly of women but also of boys and girls and men. Every institution was full. For what purpose? For a so-called morality. Various people in society functioned as a morality police. We talk about Iran today. I have a great understanding of the morality police in Iran because that is what we had in Ireland, done very subtly, when it came to women. We knew from 1997's Banished Babies, we knew from the work of Mary Raftery and we knew from so many people. Most of all, the Departments, not the Minister personally, knew because the Departments have the key to all the data that are there that tell the story.

Into this, then, came Catherine Corless, courageous, determined, fearless. She went forward and identified the inappropriate burials of 798 children in Tuam. Let us look at what she faced. She tried and she tried and she tried. The response from the nuns, through Terry Prone, I have read out before. She talked about the letter she got. Let me be specific. Catherine Corless published her article, "The Home", in Journal of the Old Tuam Societyin 2012. It detailed the very poor conditions in the institutions and so on. Not much attention was paid to that article. Then she went forward and, between 2011 and 2013, at her own expense, got 798 death records. Denise McNamara, in The Connacht Tribune, published an article on 13 February 2014 titled "Campaign to recognise 800 dead Tuam babies", which begins: "Were it not for the tenacity of a housewife who has spent ten years researching her own family tree, the names of 798 children buried in an unmarked grave ... would be lost for eternity." Then we had the Irish Daily Mail's story about a mass septic tank grave containing up to 800 babies and so on. What was the response of the nuns at that point? Terry Prone said on behalf of the Bon Secours Sisters to a person who was making a documentary:

Your letter was sent on to me by the Provincial of the Irish Bon Secours congregation with instructions that I should help you. I'm not sure how I can. Let me explain. When the "O My God - mass grave in West of Ireland" broke in an English-owned paper (the Mail) it surprised the hell out of everybody, not least the Sisters of Bon Secours in Ireland, none of whom had ever worked in Tuam and most of whom had never heard of it.

I ask the House to listen to what followed:

If you come here, you'll find no mass grave, no evidence that children were ever so buried, and a local police force casting their eyes to heaven and saying "Yeah, a few bones were found - but this was an area where Famine victims were buried."

I read that out to set the scene of what Catherine Corless and the survivors were facing at that point.

Then, of course, we had international attention. Eventually, we got Enda Kenny and the commission of inquiry was set up in February 2015. It was set up with limited terms of reference. It was established on 20 February. Interestingly, there were then seven interim reports, one of which was not published until the final report was published but with no explanation ever as to why it was not published. That was interesting and significant as well. Then we had the report submitted to the Minister on 30 October 2020 but which did not see the light of day. Then it was published on 12 January with extensive coverage in a Sunday paper; a leak. Part of that leak included comments from the Taoiseach.

Can you imagine that, particularly when the need for trust was of the essence? No survivor had a copy. We then had a webinar and were repeatedly told they had copies, but there were no copies. They were to download a 3,000-page document. Then there was to be a report into the leak but this never came to fruition. Different Deputies asked questions and were told that like water, the leak had broadened out. We got all of the reports.

The fifth interim report is particularly significant. You come back to the commission of investigation where the caveat was put in respect of the survivors' testimony to the effect that it was contaminated. They were the 550 courageous people who came forward. There was a caveat from the three wise people of the commission of investigation telling us to beware because the evidence might be contaminated. On page 8 of the fifth interim report, it is stated:

The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who owned and ran these institutions provided the Commission with an affidavit about burials generally and specifically about the Castlepollard and Sean Ross child burials but very little evidence was provided to support the statements in it. The affidavit was, in many respects, speculative, inaccurate and misleading.

This is repeated on page 22. That is the commission telling us that the affidavit was speculative, inaccurate and misleading. I did not see that repeated anywhere in the final report. The Minister might correct me if it was. The commission raises the issue of Tuam and Bessborough, which distinguish themselves by having no records of burials. The commission does rise to pose the question. The more difficult question to answer is why the children were buried in such an inappropriate manner. The commission goes through whether chambers were used for sewage and feels obliged to clarify that there were not. However, it did not highlight the fact that the bodies were wrapped and placed in sewage chambers. The commission points out that a concrete lid had to be lifted so that the bodies of those babies could be put down.

I do not know if the Minister has read these reports but they are there in black and white. The fifth interim report contains the phrase "speculative, inaccurate and misleading". There is no caveat in the final report with regard to their evidence. Instead, a premium is put on the accuracy of their evidence.

There is also a little on the sale of bodies to the medical department in Galway. The report gives the price for which the bodies were sold and how the porters sold them and the doctors received them. This matter is worth looking at. However, I will stay focused on what we are doing today. The Minister tells us this involves human rights. This has nothing to do with human rights. This has to do with a cold, calculated decision about costs. That is what this is about.

I am not going to waste my time saying that the Minister has done a good job and that I believe in his bona fides because at this point. A very faulty Bill is before us and it is concerned with cost containment instead of justice. I find it insulting to be told that it is based on human rights principles.

This is probably my last time to have such time to talk about this matter. My comments will be blunt - not on my behalf but on behalf of Catherine Corless and all the brave people who have tried to educate Deputies, taken cases to court and succeeded in getting an appendix to the report of the commission of investigation setting out that they had to go to court. There were more courageous women in the background waiting to see it. There was then a settlement, which is what is in the library. Very courageous people came forward such as Clann and Máiréad Enright and her colleagues. I could name them all. Catriona Crowe is another. All of them helped to educate Deputies, as well as us operating on the basis of our own gut feeling and work to come forward to say that this is the time to get it right and make language mean something because language has meant nothing. There was no forced incarceration, there were no illegal adoptions and there was no evidence of the mothers' consent not being given. This is what is being said. We listened to 550 people and we did not take on board what they said.

In addition to the leak, we had the debacle regarding the recordings. The Minister can shake his head or he can listen and learn like we all can. I am not an expert, but I am certainly an expert having read the material and made myself aware of what we are being told and what people have suffered. I would say I am an expert on that at this point - only on that part. I am not an expert on everything else. We had the leak and then the debacle over the recorded material that was not recorded.

We now have this Bill and we leave out how many people. We put the emphasis on the inclusion of approximately 34,000 people with 19,000 qualifying for an enhanced medical card for which, I am sure, they should be very grateful really. The number of people who spent longer than six months is 14,507. The number of people who spent less than six months is 24,149 so we have excluded the vast majority of children who were in mother and baby homes on spurious grounds that they were tabula rasa, nothing affected them and at the end of six months, they were still tabula rasa. The Minister has done this despite the fact that the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has set out that this is wrong along with the ICCL and 34 clinicians working in the area of childhood trauma. It is simply not based on scientific evidence. It is not based on our experience as mothers and fathers. The Minister has excluded all of those children. In another speech, he talked about how he cannot monetise the harm done. That is exactly what he has done. That is exactly what he is standing over - the monetisation of suffering in the narrowest way possible.

The Minister also excluded children who were boarded out. We are going to ignore them as well even though the interdepartmental group looked at the number, which was 4,757. All of these numbers are very specific and are easy to deal with in terms of a proper, just and fair redress scheme based on human rights. The Minister has ignored people who were illegally adopted. Does he remember the Marion Reynolds report that was never discussed in the Dáil? Ms Reynolds asked for her name to be taken off that report. If I am wrong, and as I have done repeatedly, I ask the Minister to correct me. I understand that the author asked for her name to be removed from the report because of changes made by the Minister and Department. That report was a scoping exercise to identify the extent of illegal adoptions. It has never been dealt with.

There is no redress for systematic racism despite UN human rights experts highlighting this in correspondence. The Minister knows this - as recently as 23 September 2022. It is discriminatory. It does not include all relevant institutions. Remember that the commission of investigation chose a sample number of county homes and the major mother and baby homes. Not all homes were chosen. The Minister is proceeding with that, although there is the option to include. He is completely ignoring the bonding. I will refer to an email that I will not read out, although I have been given permission. Of three siblings, two were adopted at nine months so they will come under the scheme while a third sister who was born a few years later and spent less than nine months in an institution will not. Imagine that family trying to explain this to each other. The two who were adopted at nine months will come under the scheme while the third sister, who got out before six months, will not.

On work-related payments, those involved did not work. It was forced labour. The Minister knows that and I know it. Based on all the submissions from human rights groups and survivors' groups and organisations, let us for the first time place human rights at the heart of this legislation. They asked for four basic principles of human rights to be enshrined in order that the redress will be in context. I looked at the Title. It does not enshrine the basic principles of human rights, which I do not have time to go into but which have already been read out by Deputy Sherlock with regard to the ICCL.

Why am I saying all of this? In 2003, the Residential Institutions Redress Board was set up. There was a waiver, and anyone who disclosed information about an award - I include myself in this regard because I was a barrister at the time - was considered to have committed an offence. That criminal offence is still in place.

Fast forward then to 2013 and the Magdalene redress scheme. Let us remember the Ombudsman's report in this regard, and that we should learn from it. This is basically what he said. He also referred to the maladministration. Are these words remembered? He stated, "In order to ensure that any future restorative justice or redress schemes benefit from the learning from the operation of this and other schemes" there must be guidance. Those documents must be open, accountable and exist. Nothing has been learned.

I was involved with regard to the redress scheme in 2003. Moving forward, there was the Magdalene redress scheme in 2013. This current scheme will probably become operational in 2023. Something like this, therefore, has occurred every ten years in the span of three decades. I am referring to the 30 years that I am taking out of a span of 100 years. What have we learned? We are still persisting with the waiver. I pay tribute to the Minister for removing the silence regarding the amount of money the people concerned are going to get. This is progress. Can you imagine, though, that it has taken us some 20 years to take this provision out. The waiver is still being persisted with despite the UN Committee Against Torture having found that the waivers imposed upon Elizabeth Coppin in the context of the Residential Institutions Redress Board and Magdalenex gratiarestorative schemes were unenforceable. The UN committee affirmed the requirements incumbent on the State, but I do not have time to go into detail. It is worth looking at that judgment in the context of the waiver being retained. Deputies have received numerous emails on this matter. One asked why St. Muras Nursery, Fahan, Lifford, was not included in the scheme. I am sure we are going to get many more queries. The aspect of boarding out has been ignored, as I said, as has the waiver.

Having learned nothing from Caranua, and that debacle and the misnaming of it as a "new friend", a new body is being set up. Another office is being set up within the Minister's office. It will not be independent. We have no idea as to how applications will be made. Will it be an oral affidavit or a story? There will be a review, which I welcome. It will be carried out by the deciding officer. Then there will the be an appeal. Once this is heard, and just to ensure that the person concerned has no sense of the independence of the process, the deciding officer gets to tell the person the result of the appeal. Can you imagine that in terms of a lack of insight?

We have also had no update on the negotiations with the religious orders or those involving the pharmaceutical companies. The legal aid being provided is minimal in the context of two aspects, namely, the waiver and the affidavit. The affidavit will arise where the chief deciding officer is unhappy with the documentation and requests an affidavit. Another question on the documentation concerns the chief deciding officer having access to the archives to make a decision. When he gets those documents, will they be made available to the applicants? I ask this because it would be essential if justice were to be done.

Turning to the matter of outstanding correspondence with the Department, for a year to two I have been requesting for all the documentation that exists between the Government, the Department and the commission of investigation. I tried to work with the Department to narrow down the scope, but I still have received no reply.

See this speech in context