Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. First and foremost, all of us in this House should acknowledge that the speed and pace with which this legislation is being dealt is, as proven by the volume of emails we have received, unnecessarily re-traumatising the survivors of mother and baby homes. In fact, this entire Bill is unnecessary.

The Commission of Investigation Act 2004 was never the appropriate legislation on which to base an inquiry into grave and systemic human rights abuse because of its provisions around confidentiality. However, the Government is not bound by the 2004 Act because it can legislate and legal experts have set out how that can be done. After all, it is legislating today in order to unseal selective records for a Tusla database.

We have heard the Minister claim that he is protecting the interests of those who suffer abuse by archiving the remaining records for 30 years. I thought we had moved away from the paternalistic attitude to citizens. In the context of the Retention of Records Bill 2019, the then Government made the same argument when it wanted to seal records for 75 years but, rightly, the Committee on Education and Skills of the previous Oireachtas pointed out that doing so would re-abuse survivors. The argument that the Government knows what is best for a person is the attitude that led us to the point at which we find ourselves today. The history of this State is marked by its arguing that it knew what was best for its women, children and young mothers. I ask the Minister to please reconsider what he is doing today because it will only visit further abuse on survivors.

Nobody is saying that the public should have access to the personal data of those affected. Of course they should not. These are people's lived experiences we are discussing. Those affected by the abuse that this State meted out to them should have the option to receive all of their personal data and information. They should also be entitled to the transcripts of their evidence because these are their life stories. This Bill, as I read it, seems to want to take away the ability of people to understand what happened to mothers and babies in this State. There is also the fact that the Government wants to seal up vast amounts of State and institutional administrative records that are critical to helping us to understand how the system of forced family separation operated in this country. I beg the Minister to listen to the thousands of people who wrote to us over the past 24 hours and not rush this legislation through the Houses.The Government side has the numbers so all we are doing today is talking but trying to give voice to the 4,000 people who contacted us over the past 24 hours and the survivors who are being re-traumatised. I ask the Minister to listen to the survivors. I ask him to find a solution that ensures survivors have ownership of their evidence and their lived experience and seek to ensure that we, as a State, learn from this and ensure it never happens again.