Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending today. For many this January has been a dark month and the report has definitely made it worse. First, I will briefly address the leaking of the report before its publication. Shame on whoever did it. Obviously, that person has never had their agency and their rights taken away from them and I hope the Minister investigates the issue. It was an extra cut to the many wounds these women and children have already.

I consider myself privileged to be tasked with responsibility to speak here today. This much-anticipated report has finally been published after five long years. Women and children - our citizens - have been waiting for this publication with fear, anxiety, hope and a need to get that part done to move on to the next stage, heal and get answers and vindication for all the abuse and wrongs done to them.

The commission's report highlights an abject failure of care, decency and common sense. It highlights the failure of our State to care and follow through on the ideology from which it was born. To a layperson like me, that seems criminal. I look now to the Garda, as it must investigate to the fullest extent.I hope the Minister can stress to his colleague, the Minister for Justice, and the Garda Commissioner that if resources are needed to go over records they hold and to conduct investigations into numerous potential criminal acts, then those resources must be provided.

Reading the report proves that when people speak of the good old days in this country, they really are not talking about the good old days for women and children. It was a dark and miserable place. Power sat with a few, people of so-called good standing in their communities in a sick cabal of authority under the pretence of decency, with a warped sick opinion that one thing was good and the other so bad that girls, women and babies were treated like dirt. We were taught "sex", "pregnancy" and "childbirth" were bad words and that these were wrong and sinful things. One example I could never understand growing up was the stupidity, misogyny or ignorance whereby a woman had to be churched after giving birth. People were taught that childbirth made a woman unholy or unclean because it resulted from sexual activity. Churching was to allow an unclean woman, who had to be married, to re-enter the church in a state of grace. Really, the indignity and stupidity of this. Childbirth is no fun but there certainly is no shame. It was another way to put down women and make them feel there was something wrong with themselves or their bodies.

The warped and perverse belief system perpetrated by church teachings and church status in society wrongly caused people to look down on women who were pregnant and unmarried. There was no humanity in this so-called Republic which, according to the Proclamation, was meant to guarantee equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens and cherish all the children of the nation equally. To say we failed to implement this tenet of the Proclamation is an understatement.

The testimonies of the report and the long discussions I have had with survivors and adoptees have had a profound effect on me. As an unmarried woman with children, this huge part of our country's reality cuts me deep. Would I be a member of Seanad Éireann if this were a few decades ago? I very much doubt it. I feel fortunate to live in an Ireland where there is some morality and humanity towards women and their children. Living in the household that my children do, they very often listen to the radio and news. They are acutely aware of what is going on in our country. Listening to all the talk last week, one of my children asked, "Mammy why were you not put away?" Another asked, "What is wrong with us? Sure there is nothing wrong with us Mammy." There is nothing wrong with children whose parents are not married. There was never anything wrong with them or their mothers. The legacy lives on and my children know that in the past the community and country in which they live may have classed children like them as second-class citizens. It breaks my heart to see the confusion on my boys' faces trying to process this in their minds. Imagine so-called Christians making a rule that there could be something wrong with a beautiful perfect baby. From the evidence I have heard, babies were adopted as though they were products off a shelf. "From a good family" and "lovely fair skin" were some of the descriptions to entice adoption. Little souls were reduced to products on a shelf if an institution thought them good enough. However, if someone deemed children to be imperfect, so-called, they were probably assigned to life in institutions.

It is also so disgusting that the beautiful lives and existence of babies could not have warranted proper burial. Many of the 9,000 babies were not given the respect they deserved. Now they must get this respect, and the State has the responsibility to investigate anywhere where there is a potential mass burial ground. The religious organisations should finally face up to the reality of the wrongs and hand over every single shred of information they have. The control over information must end. We know the horrors that went on in these institutions. We did not need a report to tell us. The survivors needed and hoped the report would give dignity and some semblance of justice to the women and children who have fought to be heard and acknowledged. Some say we must reject the report but to what end? We have a report. It is a huge body of work. Let us challenge it. Let us dispute it. Let us look to the evidence that our citizens gave in testimony and work hard on future actions to do right by those testimonies.

I have written to the Joint Committee on Children, Disability, Equality and Integration, of which I am a member, to ask it to invite the chair of the commission to come before it to discuss the report. I hope this request will be met positively by my colleagues. Part of the reason we are not satisfied with the report is probably due to the terms of reference and the mechanism by means of which the commission was established.It was more than likely wrong and we have seen proof of that over and over. We cannot change this, unfortunately. The remit was far too narrow and proved to be a negative. It only describes a percentage of the depravity. The rest of the county homes and the women who passed through them deserve the right to be heard. There are also many women and children who never went into institutions. They have also suffered from those attitudes of church, State and society. It is also estimated that 15,000 people in Ireland and abroad were adopted, whether illegally or legally, during the timeframe under investigation and many of these were excluded as well. We cannot ignore these people any more.

The report is also full of contradictions. For example, it finds there were no forced adoptions but also states that a woman had no other choice. Surely when all a person's options, rights and agency are stolen by people of so-called standing in the community, these adoptions could not be anything but forced. The report says there is no evidence for abuse but it is clear they were abused verbally, emotionally and physically. It just does not make sense.

The priority now is to ensure a survivor-centred approach and that the recommendations are worked through and the ones that are acceptable to survivors are implemented as soon as possible. We must stop failing these women and adoptees. The information and legislation must come without delay. There needs to be full engagement with stakeholders on the legislation. Adoptees cannot be left in the dark any longer. They need focused legislation to give access to their birth certificates, information, health, history and heritage like all other citizens in the State. They have a right to their records. The State or any institution certainly does not own their truth.

I ask the Minister that mental health supports be extended to all adoptees, birth parents and survivors who are affected, rather than just the survivors of the institutions in the report. I ask that he demand all adoption records. Is there a case that because staff of these religious institutions were in most cases paid employees of a local authority they are, in fact, State records? It is wrong for private organisations to hold onto information regarding an individual's history.

We will now be judged on our actions. We cannot right the wrongs but we can work hard on the restoration of the faith of these survivors and children in this country. We can do this by fulfilling our duties in good faith through consultation and implementation of the recommendations, as well as by including every institution, survivor and adoptee. We can also do this by abolishing direct provision centres. They are a modern-day shame. We know the damage institutions cause and we must sort this out without haste.

Finally, I thank all the survivors and the adoptees for their relentless bravery. For what it is worth, I send my strength and love to each and every one of them.