Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire agus roimh na daoine an-spesialta atá sa gailearaí inniu.

This is a hugely emotive issue. However, I am taken aback by the use of the word "discovery". A discovery usually pertains to something that nobody knew about. I believe that many people knew about this scenario and therefore it is not a discovery, it is a cover-up of huge magnitude with massive ramifications.

Catherine Corless is one of the most formidable people I have met. She is an incredible woman. I spoke to her earlier today. Over the past couple of years, I have tried to help her access the information she has been looking for. She is still being frustrated in her efforts to get to the information that she and the families here are searching for. Much of it does not need a commission of investigation.

I am very critical of Galway County Council. We had a meeting with it in 2014 where Ms Corless requested access to records held by the county council. The county council blocked her from access to those archives because she was not an academic. If Catherine Corless does not qualify as an academic in this country, who does? If she is not an academic, it is about time NUI Galway offered her an honorary doctorate in order to get over this technicality.

There are maps going back a number of decades which show that there are burial sites in Tuam. They were put there before the housing estate was built. They were on the maps and the folios before the playground was built. When adaptations were made to buildings it was known that there were burial sites there. To say that this was happening within the religious institution without anybody in the locality knowing about it is absolute hogwash. This was collusion of the highest order.

Who put the women in there? Who was aware of what was going on? There are records of money transactions. Some of those records, such as rents paid and so on, are available to Galway County Council. People signed off on birth certificates, death certificates and baptismal certificates. People in the establishment at the time were aware of what was going on. Why was nobody asking any questions? Why has that not been followed up on?

If children were fostered, particularly to the United States, passports should have been issued. Why were they not issued? Who would have known about this? Why did nobody ask any questions? I know that Galway County Council have records on this issue going back to the 1960s and 1970s. Why has nobody in Galway County Council raised this issue? Were any Ministers, such as a Minister for the Environment, aware of any of these issues? Surely if they were being raised locally, they would have been raised with Ministers. Who in Government knew about these types of things? Why was it kept quiet?

Who was being protected? Who were the fathers? Were they well-to-do locals? Were they married men? Were they priests? Were they bishops? Why are they being protected? Were they gardaí? Is that part of what was going on here? That needs to be brought out.

It is ironic that Catherine Corless heard about the commission of inquiry statement on the radio last week. There is a lot of lip service to how wonderful Catherine is and the work that she is doing. People like Catherine Corless and the groups that are represented here today need to be given access to the files available.

Ms Corless wants to meet the Minister. She wants to discuss these issues. If the Minister could give us a guarantee that that will happen in the near future it would be very welcome.

There are issues regarding other homes. Some of them are now privatised. Catherine Corless and I were approached by a man who suffered institutional abuse in another location in Galway. He has concerns about St. Anne's on Taylor's Hill in Galway. It was a children's home. It is now in private hands. I understand it has been bought by a developer, possibly with the intention of building a hotel on the site.Perhaps something happened there as well that needs to be investigated. There may also be a burial site there. The old Grove hospital in Tuam has been brought up. We need to look at all the possible private institutions, because much of the land has been sold off.

We have to ask if resources are going to be available to do a proper investigation. I imagine that the coroner's office is going to be snowed under with the work that is going to have to be done in this scenario. Can the Government guarantee that the proper resources will be made available? Are there enough forensic archaeologists to do this work properly and respectfully? Who in Government knew about this and why did it take Ms Catherine Corless to bring this to the stage? I believe that a wholesale cover-up happened here and that the State and the establishment came together to make sure that this message would not come out. I believe that Catherine Corless and the other organisations that are looking for the truth, relatives and information are still being frustrated by the organs of State within this country. That is not good enough. I hope the Minister would make sure the message goes back to the Government that it needs to make those records available, because people and citizens deserve the truth.