Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have been taken aback by the statements from Senators Hildegarde Naughton and Aideen Hayden due to their hypocrisy. They are calling for debates on issues of policy that the Government has been implementing for the past four years and which they fully support. I will return to this matter on another day.

It is approximately one year since Ms Catherine Corless brought to the attention of the world media the issue surrounding the Tuam mother and baby home. One year on, I commend The Examiner, Mr. Conall Ó Fátharta in particular, for a series of excellent articles published last week on the issues pertaining to the Bessborough, Tuam and other mother and baby homes. We had a number of Ministers, Government representatives, Deputies and Senators rightfully make statements last year in which they outlined their horror about what had been brought to light by Ms Corless in the Tuam area, in particular. Through the newspaper articles we have found that according to reports the State was aware of these burial grounds at least two years beforehand. It is apparent from freedom of information requests that internal reports in the HSE in 2012 had brought the issue to light. It was stated categorically that they should be brought to the attention of the Minister as a matter of urgency and that it could be a huge scandal. At the time, the Minister with responsibility for children, Deputy Charles Flanagan, told the Dáil that the deaths had brought the horrors of the mother and baby homes to the attention of the Government. He said the practices in mother and baby homes had not featured prominently in the various reviews and investigations that had dealt with many of the abuses inflicted on vulnerable citizens, many of them women and children. We know from freedom of information requests and the newspapers articles that at that stage the State had known about Tuam and Bessborough mother and baby homes for nearly two years. The HSE had investigated both institutions in 2012 when it was examining the health authority's interaction with the Magdalen laundries.Last month, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs reiterated its belief that an audit of adoption records to ascertain the scale of illegal and forced adoption that occurred here would yield little useful information. I beg to differ, as do organisations such as Justice for Magdalenes and the Adoption Rights Alliance -----