Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House on another very sad occasion in our collective history. The outrage and sadness throughout the country is palpable. We have staggered from scandal to scandal in recent years and it has sent the country reeling. People are disturbed, shocked and bewildered. We are a society in mourning for the countless losses and deaths and the unspeakable criminal cruelty committed against our very vulnerable, our women and our infants.

The Tuam revelations and what has yet to be discovered could well dwarf all other scandals to date. From the Free State's inception, the ruling political powers danced to the tune of the ultraconservative church. In drawing up our Constitution, de Valera invited Archbishop Charles McQuaid to help build and compose Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish Constitution, and the Catholic teachings of Charles McQuaid in particular are very influential in our entire Constitution. The new Republic had the cailíní, virgins and pure, dancing at the crossroads in a twisted notion of utopia. Our collective souls were handed over to the church to do what it wanted with women and children, and society washed its bloody hands.

Over the past six years, I and Sinn Féin have supported and attended Flowers for Magdalenes event, which takes place on the nearest Sunday to International Women's Day. Through that emotional event of remembrance I have formed ties with the Tuam mothers and babies group and the United Survivors group, who are here in the Gallery today. I applaud each and every one of them. They have reams of document which require forensic investigation and lodgement with the Garda and the DPP for their consideration and action.

I want to highlight some of the personal stories as told to me by the women and children sitting in the Gallery. They have spent a lifetime searching for their real stolen selves and a lifetime searching for their stolen babies. They have suffered as outcasts, suffered at the hands of the State, suffered at the hands of the priests and nuns, suffered in lonely terrifying childbirth and suffered painful engorged breasts with milk but no baby to nurse. Many have endured lifelong mental health issues from the scarred experience. I and the people of the country cry out and demand these horrific wrongs be recognised, investigated and resolved as much as they can be, and for the body politic to ask forgiveness from these women and their children.

Recently the Taoiseach, Deputy Kenny, stated the nuns did not walk into homes to take the girls, the fallen women, into institutions. Perhaps they did not, but the priests did. They walked into homes, schools and workplaces throughout the country and the UK from the 1940s onwards. They established the Catholic Crusade of Rescue society, which hunted down women, particularly those who escaped from the mother and baby homes or institutions. Terry Harrison, who is here, was one such young girl. She escaped from Bessborough while pregnant and made it to London in the late 1970s. She was abducted from the London streets by the Catholic Crusade of Rescue society in the guise of Fr. O'Hanlon, and forcibly returned via our national airline, which it did willingly on countless occasions, to the more secure prison of the institution on the Navan Road.

I acknowledge David Kinsella, whose mother was sent to England following his birth in the institution on the Navan Road. She was told her baby would die and was told to go and forget what had happened because her baby was going to die anyhow. David suffered malnutrition all his infant life, which was so severe he had numerous admissions, which may amount to hundreds, to St. James's Hospital to treat it. Not one doctor or nurse asked why this child was going to the hospital so often, so many times a year, and why he was so small and so malnourished. It took a cleaner in St James's Hospital, Alice Kinsella, to state she wanted to mind the baby and be his mammy. Eventually, when David was four and a half years of age, she became his mammy. David then went looking for his birth mother. By the time the HSE eventually relented and gave him the information he needed, which was years later, his mammy had died, believing she had no children and that her baby had died back in the Navan Road institution. David is precious about the one thing he has from his mammy, which is his name.

I welcomed the decision to publish the second interim report of the commission of investigation into the mother and baby homes, although I think we will agree home is a gross misnomer for these locked-up places of dark bleak confinement. I and the women and children here demand they be involved in the expansion of the terms of reference into mother and baby homes. In particular, we need to include forensic auditing of the accounts. I have been given documents by Anna Corrigan of the Tuam baby group, which categorically shows the upkeep - another misnomer - of many women and children was triply paid for by the State, by parents and by the recipients of stolen babies. There is also clear and unequivocal evidence that mothers and babies were kept in the institutions for prolonged periods, despite being fit for release, for financial gain for that institution. The books also show girls and babies long gone from the institution remained on the books for extended financial payments.

I know the Bon Secours order has given great medical service to the country. I also know the Bon Secours made €3 million last year in profits. Over the past decade it has made just under €100 million in profits. These need to be given back to the Irish people and to the women and children who were so dreadfully treated.

For years I have requested from the HSE, as a nurse and a councillor, a collated list of the long-term residents in psychiatric back wards. When they were of no more use as slaves they were thrown into psychiatric units and they lived out their lives hidden and unheard. Many of them had their babies stolen.

In the 1950s the mortality rate of babies in the institutions was 25%, five times higher than in the community. This needs to be investigated. Was it medical neglect? Yes, it was.Was it the withholding of essential medicines on grounds of cost? Yes, it was. Was it cruelty towards those who were considered to be second class or third class citizens? As a nurse, this disturbs me to the core. It is obscene and appalling.

We need to investigate the trafficking of babies. The documents in the Tuam archive include correspondence from senior church clergy requesting babies be made available for adoption. Subsequently, babies up to 3 years of age were removed from their mothers and sold. Many were sent to the United States without their mothers knowing anything of their history. We do not know who was involved in this horrific scandal. It is possible that doctors, social workers and nurses were involved. Are they still working in the system or the caring sector? This issue needs to be addressed immediately.

I have the utmost empathy and respect for everybody gathered in the Chamber today. I salute them with love and compassion. I acknowledge the fierce determination of the women and children in the Visitors Gallery. They deserve our unconditional apologies. To them I say, "Well done." They have been heard and we will ensure that they will continue to be heard. They deserve to stand cherished among us as equals.