Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House. I thank her in particular since, when the horrifying details of Tuam and the children there were being presented, she acknowledged that it was not unexpected. That was important, because we need to recognise that this issue was in the public realm and had been discussed. Something that the Minister addressed in her own speech and that we need to tackle in Ireland is the culture of denial, which is the first line we meet every time we see another example, more evidence or another story of our appalling history of institutional abuse. It is often met with the culture of denial. People like Catherine Corless, who are acting compassionately and heroically, have to constantly face disbelief, dismissal and often conscious obstruction in the pursuit that they undertake. It is wrong that such individuals have had to lead so much of the search for justice. It is also wrong that they have met with such obstruction. I thank the Minister for acknowledging that. It goes very deep in Ireland and we will have to acknowledge and work on it.

We all know that many other things will be found. We only need to look at what we know already. There were 472 deaths in 19 years in the Bessborough home. Some 80 of those children were suffering from marasmus, which means severe malnutrition, including babies who have in many cases been taken away from the arms of their mothers, who have not been allowed to breast-feed them. Children suffering from malnutrition - an issue which is easy to control, deal with and address - represent almost 20% of known deaths in a short period in the Bessborough home alone, as we heard in the story earlier.

I welcome the Minister's agreement to the extension of terms. It is important that those are comprehensive. We have heard that the Minister will look at the question of vaccinations, the exploitation by multi-national corporations and by medical schools. We also need to look at the exploitation by companies of those in the mother and baby homes for unpaid work. It was effectively on a level of forced work for those women, who were basically robbed of their lives, energy, physical labour and possibilities by these institutions. That has to be part of the remit. I ask the Minister to ensure that it is.

We need to look beyond those homes currently listed, into the county homes, and even the psychiatric institutions, when we talk about extension of the terms. I spoke to a woman whose mother had post-natal depression, was put into a psychiatric institution and died there. This is all part of a deep architecture of repression and control within our State. When we start to unravel that architecture, we will have to go deep and look at all its strands and forms, and we will need to look at the issue of collusion. We will need to ask, as one person at a recent Flowers for Magdalenes event did, why the Garda was called when a woman ran away if she broke no law. Why were the gardaí taking people back into these institutions? Why were passports being issued for children wherever there was doubt about this forced adoption issue? We have to look at all levels. Let us be clear that this collusion does not excuse these institutions at their core.

I welcome that there will be an interim report. There needs to be interim action as well. Groups like First Mothers have waited for action for too long. That needs to come to the fore. I also want to say that there was a violation of the principal of refuge that needs to be looked at.

I have very important questions to put to the Minister. We talk about the past, but we need to talk about now. Where is the obstruction of justice now? Records are denied to individuals, even the records of where their loved ones are buried. Ms Marie Collins has had to resign from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors at the Vatican because she recognises that the Pope, while he acts in good faith, approves measures which meet obstruction in the Vatican, a vast centre of wealth. Very modern and complex company structures are put in place to hide and obscure the assets of the institutions involved in this violence and abuse. I ask the Minister to ensure that we address the problems now.

I recognise the good people within the church, including the Pope, and I wish them well in their work and their efforts for reform. We are here to represent the State, and the State has to take responsibility to ensure every penny of compensation is paid, even if through the transfer of assets, as rightly suggested by Senator Noone. We also need to say that it is not acceptable to still have our education and health services be delivered by the church. We have to say that the separation of church and State needs to be complete, with a new hospital opening this week. This is the moment to complete that transition, and I ask for that to be part of the wider discussion.