Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment and the idea of a legislative review as it would be appropriate. From the first part of our discussions today the Minister will have heard the concerns and context for the creation of the 2004 Act. It came from a situation where there were legitimate concerns about the former mechanisms. Equally true is the fact that the world has moved on substantially since 2004. The GDPR has been mentioned extensively from which there are data protection and other rights. The rights of the child are also fundamental. Again, it is that question of was this appropriate because this was not an inquiry simply into the operations or functions, be it Siteserv or others. It was an investigation that had a large number of very vulnerable people who were affected. So there are questions about whether that was appropriate and people do not believe that it was the appropriate tool.

Equally, it is important that we look to what tools are appropriate, moving forward, because there are other issues. We know that there are scandals and direct provision is one that springs to mind. There are other issues where we will see future investigations, unfortunately. That is something we know we are going to face as a State. Therefore, it is important that we learn from this to put in place proper principles of redress. We know, as Senator Bacik stated, the damage done by the redress board where people had to sign gagging orders. We know the problems with waivers. We need to learn from each of these issues and moments of institutional violence the tools that we used to handle them. The mistakes that were made need to be honestly addressed so that we can face other issues of collective responsibility and justice into the future. Again, a legislative review would be extremely important, crucially in terms of the mother and baby homes in looking backwards but also to ensure that we learn from that.

Let me outline a very interesting point in the discussion earlier whereby the 2004 interpretation overruled even the orders made in 2015. The interpretation by the committee was clearly the more conservative interpretation, in respect of privacy, from the 2004 Act rather than the quite wide mandate in terms of the right that privacy should be the exception that is invoked, which was in the 2015 order. That just speaks to the problem of having legislation that has not evolved. So, rather than weakening our current legislation as we, unfortunately, see in this Bill, because of a 2004 Act, let us try to improve the tools of the past and adapt them for the future.