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

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions. In the time available to me, I will try to address some of their queries, many of which I know we will discuss on Committee and Report Stages.

I would like to take the opportunity to set this Bill in the context of the Government's action plan and all that Government is doing in response to the needs of former residents and the legacy of these institutions.

Unfortunately, Deputy Connolly is not present. She spoke with huge knowledge, as she always does, as well as justifiable and real anger, about the history of the institutions at the time and the response of the State to these institutions. In terms of the issues she highlighted, I need to speak to how the State is seeking to respond to the issues she and many others raised. That response is being undertaken in the context of the action plan.

Deputy Connolly spoke about Tuam and the attempt to silence the work done by Catherine Corless. I know from my visit to Tuam and engagement with Tuam relatives that the core ask has always been to excavate the site and allow them to rebury their relatives with dignity. That is what the State is seeking to achieve in terms of the Bill and the work that has already been done to begin to establish the agency in Tuam. Work will begin on the site in the New Year.

Deputy Connolly said I or the Government had totally ignored the issue of illegal birth registrations. I would like to put on the record that when I came into office, I had before me an audit of what had, at that point, been potential illegal birth registrations. I published the audit. One of the conclusions of the audit was that further research would not deliver significant additional information. I was not happy with that as a conclusion. That is why I asked the special rapporteur on child protection to undertake a further piece of work on the issue of illegal birth registrations. He did so and gave me the report. A significant number of his recommendations are contained in the Birth and Information and Tracing Act in terms of how we provide practical supports for people who find that their births were illegally registered.

We included a provision in the Birth Information and Tracing Act that will allow Tusla to do further specialised tracing where there are files. We know there are files with suspicious markers, and Tusla now has statutory permission to undertake further work to discover whether more illegal birth registrations have taken place. It was important that the birth information and tracing legislation responded to the immediate needs of the 153 people identified as having been subject to illegal birth registrations in St. Patrick's Guild. It also allows for a process to examine the issue of illegal birth information further.

A number of Deputies, including Deputy Boyd Barrett, discussed the issue of access to information. I want to take us back to the first piece of legislation I dealt with in this area, the database legislation. At the time, I was accused of sealing records. I want to talk about what we did. We preserved a database that the commission of investigation developed. It believed it had to redact that to a point where it would be destroyed. I did not want it to be destroyed, so I brought forward legislation to protect it. The database will be used in this Bill to assist survivors. Rather than survivors having to find some information to show they were in an institution for a certain period of time, the database will prove that people were in an institution for a certain period of time. It removes any burden of proof on survivors.

The database is also being used by Tusla and the Adoption Authority of Ireland, AAI. Under the Birth Information and Tracing Act we introduced recently, 4,600 people have already sought their information. In terms of the time it will take for the information to be released, I will come back to Deputy Boyd Barrett. We provided for a 30-day initial period. If a file is complex, the case can take up to 90 days. A significant number of applications have come in initially, which is a good thing.

The database the House voted to preserve in the initial debate in October and November 2020 has already been used by my Department to give more than 700 people immediate access to their files and the commission of investigation report. During the debate on that legislation, many people spoke about their frustration, on behalf of people who gave testimony before the commission, that they could not get the information. Seven hundred people have already received information because of a vote in the House.

That comes back to one of the central issues that has dominated this debate, which is whether it is mother and baby institutions or other institutions and the wider issue of adoption, namely, the lack of access to information. That is why earlier this year the House voted finally to enshrine a statutory right of access to information to birth certificates, early life and medical information and any items a parent left for people under the Birth Information and Tracing Act. After 20 years of successive governments trying to legislate on this issue, we have finally achieved a statutory right to information. That was a key element of the Government's response in terms of the action plan.

We have to understand and properly reflect the history of what happened in these institutions. That was something I was very conscious of and something that was raised with me early in my tenure. That is why, under the action plan, we are bringing forward the national records and memorial centre. The site in Sean McDermott Street was under a cloud of controversy for years and was threatened with being turned into a boutique hotel. It has been transferred from Dublin City Council to the Office of Public Works so that we can begin the process of developing a national records and memorial centre where researchers and individual survivors and their families will have access to records and there will be an appropriate historical depiction of what happened in all institutions, which can act as a site of conscience.

When I read about it in the action plan, the work on appropriate terminology did not mean so much to me. It was only when we debated the Birth Information and Tracing Act and had a discussion on whether a mother should be referred to as a mother or a birth mother that I understood the difference it made to so many women. I had always used the term "birth mother", but it was taken as deeply insulting to a certain number of mothers. On foot of that, we made those changes. That is why that research, carried out under the action plan, is so important.

The Bill is part of the State's response. As I have said, the concept of redress means different things to different survivors. Different survivors have different priorities. For some, payments are important. For others, access to health support is important. For some, what is crucial is the reburial of their family members and for others it is access to information. What the State and Government are trying to do is advance all of these issues rapidly. When the action plan was published 18 months ago and we look at what has been achieved, there has been significant progress. I recognise so much more needs to be undertaken.

In terms of some of the specific points, many Deputies raised the issue of engagement with religious orders. The commission made extremely significant findings in terms of the culpability of the State and religious orders. I have always believed, and have said publicly, that if the religious orders' apologies are to have any meaning, they have to be combined with some real and tangible actions. That is what I have said to the orders. I have met seven of the orders and heads of the Church of Ireland. Negotiations are ongoing. I do not have date for when they will end, but negotiations are ongoing and are being pursued. I have always been clear that the need for time and to provide former residents with redress should not be delayed according to the outcome of those negotiations. The negotiations will go on and we will provide redress under the scheme.

Deputy Naughten spoke with great passion and power about the issue of the culpability of pharmaceutical companies.

I met with GSK. I put to it the findings of the report in terms of vaccine trials. I asked it to consider its response, which falls far short. I know it provided information to people who believe they were subject to trials but that is not an adequate response given their significance - I know Deputy Naughten campaigned on this long before I was in this House - in the context of the lack of informed consent.

Ten minutes is not enough to deal with the many significant and important issues that Deputies have raised. I ask that the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach indulge me for 30 seconds because Deputy Funchion raised a very important point about certain solicitor firms writing to survivors to ask them to sign up and pay for legal advice. We are aware of that. There is no need for any survivors seeking to use this scheme to take legal advice because the scheme is not being done in an adversarial matter. The State can provide them with legal advice in two stages. We will make that point clear in our communications with survivors, especially in the bulletin we send out to the email list, that they should not feel pressured to sign up to a solicitor firm.

I look forward to dealing with many of the other issues on Committee Stage.

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