Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

A little humility would not go amiss. The Government was forced every step of the way to do something. Catherine Corless, who has fought gallantly, raised this back in 2012. Survivors have come here repeatedly and educated us. We have gotten over 1,500 emails, at a conservative estimate, about the madness of progressing with this divisive and discriminatory scheme. How dare the Taoiseach take pride in what the Government has done when it has been forced every step of the way? A more humble Taoiseach might learn, as he has been implored to do by the High Court and by various international and national bodies including the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, and base any redress on fairness and human rights. The Government is not doing that. At the very least, I ask the Taoiseach to tell us what the justification was for the six months if it was not money. At the very least he should tell us that part and stop boasting that this is the best scheme. We have brought in schemes for mica and all the other things and we have not batted an eyelid. Indeed, I have joined with my colleagues in those debates. This is an acknowledgement that we had an architecture of containment for a century, from start to finish, from which various classes in this society benefited. With regard to those people who ended up in mother and baby homes, how dare the Taoiseach quote the commission as saying they walked in there or their families put them in there? That is complete nonsense and utterly ignores what happened in terms of the powerful and the powerless.

See this speech in context