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

I find it absolutely extraordinary that the Minister has managed to stay pretty stony-faced in all of this - I am sure he is aware of the strength of feeling that has been expressed by people - and has refused to give the answer or to explain the exclusion, despite the last-minute and desperate appeals that have been made in this House and, more importantly, from thousands of survivors as to how the Government can possibly justify the six-month exclusion or the refusal to fully acknowledge those boarded out and those who suffered discrimination on the grounds of race. The Minister has not given an explanation. It defies belief that that is the case. I suppose the only reason it can be is because there is no possible justification. There is no moral, rational or reasonable justification for the exclusion. I offer the Minister a final opportunity to explain to the people who are watching, and to explain to the people in the Gallery, how he came to this conclusion and why he is sticking to it in light of all of the points that have been put to him by those who are survivors.

As the Minister knows, I was adopted and I was in a mother and baby home - probably two - I do not know for how long. That is genuine. I do not actually know for how long I was in a mother and baby home. It is irrelevant. It is irrelevant how long people were in because the primal wound is the separation of mother and child. That is it. The impact of that on the child and on the mother is from the moment that happens, and that happens very early on - long before six months - and has lasting impacts. Those impacts are different for everybody. For some, they are relatively liveable with - let us put it that way. For others, whether it was one week, six weeks or six months, the pain and trauma lasts forever. For everybody, the impact lasts forever. A fundamental thing has happened out of your control, a decision made by the authorities, church and State to alter your life in the most fundamental way against your will. Six months just does not come into it. I appeal to the Minister, most importantly, to just pull back, as we appealed to him the last time round, and change this in order nobody will be excluded. Even the most elementary understanding of human child psychological development understands that the formative moments of a child's development are those early hours, days and weeks. This makes no sense at any level.

I take this opportunity to set out points that were made to me by a number of survivors in recent days. The Minister has put much store on the idea that people have had access to their information. As others have said, they have their right to do so. However, it is also starting to come to light now that people are not actually getting the information they thought they were going to get, and that there is no consistency in how that information is being dished out. In some cases, certain things are being redacted with black marker and in other cases they are being redacted by being whitened out. In some cases, for example, people are getting information about their feeding schedule and medical records when they were in mother baby homes, and in other cases they are not getting those things. People are beginning to wonder what is going on. Again, this would matter somewhat less if there was not an attempt to exclude people. There is a lack of consistency, excluding some, giving information to some and not giving information to others. That is compounding the wrong that has been done to children, mothers and those who went through the mother and baby institutions. I ask the Minister to respond at least and to give people an explanation, even though I do not think there is one, or to pull back at this last moment and listen to the people who matter in this debate.

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