Lorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to give one minute of my time to Senator Norris.

It is with great horror and distress that we are here once again to discuss another shameful chapter in our nation's history. This chapter involves women and their children and how they were treated. This just goes further to demonstrate the esteem in which unmarried mothers and their children were held in this country. Let me be clear when I say that they were held in very low esteem and were treated shabbily by everyone with whom they came into contact. These children were just commodities to be exchanged and sold and the women were just vessels, facing forced pregnancies and made to give birth in shame and in horrific circumstances. The Minister made reference to these birth mothers placing their children in good faith with adoption agencies in the hope they would be adopted. From people to whom I have spoken, and from the testimonies of women who were in these mother and baby homes, often there was no consent. They left the building for an hour or two, came back and their babies were gone, traded for money, sent to America, given to God knows who. They did not find out what happened to their babies. These babies, who are now in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, do not know from where they came. Women have been treated appallingly. I am afraid this scandal will probably stretch far further than 126 people.

I have evidence of one particular illegal adoption that I want to put on the record of the House. It does not relate to St. Patrick's Guild but rather to a mother and baby home located at 7 Cabra Park. The lady in question is Susan Corr. Susan-----