James Heffernan (Labour)

Exactly. It is like the place was swept under a rug and painted over so that we would all forget. After touring around the site I was disturbed to discover that there was no physical reminder to inform people and visitors of what went on there. Eventually I came across a sign for a graveyard up a side road and across from a building that housed the brothers that is now being used as a hostel. The sign was only the size of an A4 page. I had to go through a thicket of trees to eventually discover a small graveyard with 77 little headstones and a cross at either end. I walked around and read the names and ages etched on the gravestones. I found it quite shocking. What was most poignant, and I would urge Members to visit there and bear witness, were the little colouring pages, toy cars, dolls and footballs, the things we associate with childhood. The Minister can correct me if I am wrong but I found some evidence on the site that it is in the ownership of the VEC. I do not know if it is being used for adult education or is a Youthreach facility.

I welcome that there will be a national monument. However, Mannix Flynn has said this was our holocaust. I have been to Germany and have visited Auschwitz and other concentration camps which have been preserved as a reminder of what can happen. I urge the Minister to do something with that site; perhaps he could make it a memorial site. He should put the testimony from the survivors on the walls, as well as the pictures of the brothers who perpetrated that violence against the children, for all to see. That will bring it out into the open so we will all ensure that this type of thing can never happen again.