Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I second everything Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell said. I feel empathy as someone who was an unmarried teenage mother from a disadvantaged background. In another time, I would have fulfilled all the criteria of somebody who would have been an outcast in society. Although I can never truly understand what women and children have gone through, I appreciate I could have been in that position as well. I also speak as the daughter of an unmarried mother.

I remember being elected as president of the students' union in Trinity College. We read and learned about the mother and baby homes in school as if it was our history. I very much realised that it is not our history but our present when I received a letter from a woman - one of many letters that I received when I appeared in the newspapers. People asked me if was annoyed that the newspapers kept labelling me as a single mother. I had not thought about it but I told them that I was not annoyed and was okay with it. The reason I am okay with it is because of letters I received from women whose children were taken from their arms and put up for forced adoptions. The letters they wrote to me contained sadness and joy because I was being celebrated for my success and determination as a single mother where only a few years earlier, they were outcasts for the very same thing. They were sad that they never got the chance and opportunities I got but they were happy they got to see a shift in public thinking in their lifetimes.

In 1967, this State's statistics show that 97% of non-marital children were taken for adoption. That is a huge number of children and my concern is that the commission, as it stands and if its scope is not widened as much as possible to all institutions, including private institutions, registered adoption agencies, maternity hospitals, at least two thirds of those women and families will not get their answers. The investigation needs to be expanded. We have an ageing population. If we do not include all those who colluded in this, we run the risk that women who were put into those homes will never get the truth, will never be able to reconcile with their children and tell them that they wanted them and will never have their story heard. We need to be very careful of timeline because it is going against us. The longer we wait, we run the risk of never knowing the truth.

St. Patrick's on the Navan Road only closed in 1996, so this was not in the distant past. We need to remember that and the investigation needs to reflect that. Tuam was not an isolated case. Research by the Adoption Rights Alliance and Justice for Magdalens has made us aware that over 180 institutions, agencies and individuals who were involved with these mothers and their children. There may be unmarked graves similar to those in Tuam at institutions run by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary at Bessborough, Sean Ross Abbey and Castlepollard. Many Magdalen women also remain unidentified and in unmarked graves. The commission's terms of reference have to expand and they need to include all institutions, agencies and individuals.

Earlier we spoke about how people were slow to criticise the Catholic Church or the nuns involved. I think all we can do is criticise because at every level there was collusion. We cannot go lightly on something that happened just because other work is going on. We cannot let that cloud our judgment.

If the commission knows that there are unmarked graves, it must notify the coroner. I note the Minister said she wishes to respect the memories of the babies, and rightly so, but this can only be done by identifying those babies and their relatives who have the right to know the circumstances of the death and to arrange proper burials. Every child and adult that died in institutional care needs to be identified and that is how we will respect them.

The commission itself and the investigation process need to be reformed. The commission must hold public hearings and invite people involved in running the homes to speak as well as allowing those who allege abuse to speak. The Commission of Investigation Act 2004 needs to be amended so that evidence given to the commission in private can be published without criminal prosecution. The exemption of commission of investigation records from freedom of information requests needs to be repealed. Evidence given to the commission needs to be admissible in the court of law. The treatment of mothers and children needs to be analysed from the perspective of constitutional rights, not by the standard of what was legal at the time. There is a high likelihood that much of the legislation violated the constitutional human rights of the mothers and babies involved.

I read a quote from a woman around the time the apology was given by Julia Gillard, the former Australian Prime Minister. She remembered how she lay in bed every night with her arms wrapped around her baby inside her, knowing that she would never hold him again after that. She said she would like to talk to him one day and tell him that she and his father loved him.We can only achieve that by freeing ourselves from the unknown and by expanding that investigation. We can only find that truth when we free ourselves. Expanding the scope of the commission can unearth that unknown. We owe this to the women of Ireland who cannot tell their truths or tell their children that they love them. We are only as sick as our secrets, and our secrets are as deep as the abyss. We owe it to all involved to uncover them.