Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wanted to come in today to say a few words about a woman I met about three years ago. Her name was Kathy McMahon. I only learned yesterday of her passing.She would have been familiar to some Senators and Deputies in recent years for founding the organisation Irish First Mothers, which has been campaigning relentlessly for survivors of mother and baby homes and women put up for forced adoption. She died unexpectedly on a trip to Geneva in the past couple of days. She was a very strong, working-class woman who advocated for women who had been failed by the State in the generations before mine. She opened my eyes to my situation when, three years ago, she asked me to speak to her Irish First Mothers group. It became apparent that if I had been born in the generation before mine, I could have found myself as a teenage mother in the same position as the members of the group. Seeing my rise to success through education at Trinity College made her happy that a young mother could achieve so much but it also made her extremely sad that women like her never had the chance to be the kind of mother that I was allowed to be to my daughter at such a young age.