Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The point has been made by many here, again and again in this debate, and in previous debates. It is tragic and unacceptable that the Government is not willing to acknowledge the central point that is being made. I will take this last opportunity to dramatise the issue for the Minister about why the exclusion is so completely unacceptable, and fails to acknowledge the human reality that the separation of mother and child involves.

One of the features of mother and baby homes is that when children were born in a home, which demonstrates the wrong that was done to the mother and child, is that the nuns required the mother to immediately bandage their breasts so that there would be no bonding at all between the mother and the child. If there was any bonding, that would make it more difficult to take the child away from the mother and vice versa. Can the Minister imagine how traumatic that was for the mother and the child right from the first moment, which is normally a moment of joy for the mother, when the instantaneous and unique bond is created between a newly born baby and his or her mother? However, that was immediately denied. A bond could not be created between the baby and its mother. It goes from there.

If people think about their own children at one week, two weeks, three weeks or four weeks, and that someone snatched their baby out of their hands and said they would not see the baby again, they could imagine the trauma that involves. The idea that we can set a timeline of six months and that before that there is not a trauma or something that deserves to be acknowledged as an abuse and as a crime against the mother and child is utterly incomprehensible. It flies in the face of everything we know about the relationship between a mother and child, and about the development of children and the shaping of a child's character as well as the scar the mother carries from that moment of separation on for the rest of her life.

The point has been made, but we need to take this last opportunity to appeal to the Government not to do this because it subverts, sabotages and undermines what was supposed to be the acknowledgement of the State of the wrong that was done and the abuse that was perpetrated. It makes hollow all of the apologies or the claim that the Government has learned from this and is serious about redress for all of those who suffered that forced separation - the mothers and the children. It is not too late for the Minister to reconsider.

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