Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his attendance today.

Responsibility for that harsh treatment remains mainly with the fathers of their children and their own immediate families. It was supported by, contributed to, and condoned by, the institutions of the State and the Churches.

That, in essence, is the conclusion of the report. It was an investigation confined to the black-and-white language of law, limited to standards and burdens of proof, and it did its job. It upheld a complaint of wrongdoing and found much fault. Its language is cold and does little to ameliorate the absence of comfort and compassion deserved by those whose lives it describes.

I have wrestled with the language of the report. I am disappointed there is little assessment of how difficult it was to live in that Ireland, which tolerated nothing less than perfection from women. Its false society of denial and gaslighting was dominated by sanctimonious judgment and the iron-fisted rule of the church, which evidenced little compassion and bore little resemblance to the life of the Christ that was preached. A conclusion that blames families and fathers for unspeakable shame and hardships is difficult to swallow. I find the unadulterated presentation of fact throughout is distinctly unpalatable when the survivors deserved acknowledgment of that context to do justice to their experiences. It is a lesson that must be borne in mind for any future commissions.

While the commission members did their job and found fault, it is our duty as politicians to bring the humanity forth from these findings. In that regard and to begin, I commend the Minister's action plan with its 22 points. I urge hastening the practical supports for survivors.I hope that time will accord the Minister the regard he deserves. I have no doubt he will continue to be survivor-led in his actions, as indeed he must be. The survivors deserve that. They deserve that power and influence to put flesh on the admirable work set out by the Minister.

There is a pressing need for recriminations. We heard apologies last week. That may not be the last of them. I urge the Minister to keep an open heart and mind in that regard. There may be more to say because there is a considerable amount of blame. The Taoiseach rightly called out the fact that the State failed mothers and children. There can be no comfort or escape from that because we did fail them. I stand with the apology for that. The Tánaiste noted that the church and State ran these homes together, reinforcing social prejudice and judgment when they should have tried to change them.

That opportunity for change, which was so shockingly not seized by previous generations and politicians, is now ours. What are we going to do to change it? The first thing we can do is to give people born in these institutions the right to know who they are. Where are their records? We should gather what we do not have into one place and under one body and give them access to them. The GDPR gives rights of access and the right to possess any and all data about them. They have the right to that information without delay. I appreciate the Minister's legislation, which will go beyond information that is personal extending to information around their families. We can legislate to dilute the right, perhaps paying an owed deference to the right to privacy on the part of mothers but I urge the Minister not to do that. I urge him to instead establish support structures, a right of access to confidential counselling and advisory entities and a register to give mothers who want their secret to be kept the right to opt out of any future meeting and a right to lodge a story or letter telling the story of their child's conception and, if they so choose, to explain why they do not want to meet. The Minister needs to resource all of those types of supports but I urge him to give an unqualified and unfettered right of identity to children when he publishes the legislation. They have a fundamental right to that knowledge. The time for paternalism on the part of the State in this regard has passed. Our duty is to provide that information and support all those who will be affected by the release of that information.

This brings me to the adoptions and their legal status. I can never agree that consent, either then or in retrospect, was freely given because the mothers had no choice. They signed because their lives would be ones of misery and penury had they not signed. We also need to investigate further the evidence held by others on the aspect of babies for sale. Let us change that too. Let us expose it, detail it and get all that information out in the open.

This leads me to the church's role. The church ruled our country with an iron fist. I am old enough to have sat in a school retreat with a prominent, now deceased, member of the clergy who lectured our class on the responsibility of girls to stay chaste - that lads just could not help themselves. This particular member of the clergy had a child with his housekeeper at home, while he sat lecturing teenage girls on why they would be solely responsible if they got themselves pregnant. That was the same year Ann Lovett was found dead in a grotto in Granard. The use of false and devious information to exonerate men and demonise women was not in some bygone distant era. It is only a couple of decades ago when all those lies were preached. I welcome the fact that the Minister has sought financial contributions - well done. If they are not forthcoming, I urge him to press strongly. I will support him exploring all of the other avenues that may be open to him to ensure a contribution, not just from the church but also from the companies that ran vaccine trials. Let us send a clear signal that the days when politicians signed cosy deals with the church or other entities are over.

It is with the State that I am most angry following this report. The State - our republic - was founded on these words: "The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally". Within a matter of years of the making of that declaration, this same State allowed girls and women to be hidden away when pregnant, allowed over 6,000 pregnant children to go into mother and baby homes, never once asked the question as to the rape of these children and never once called gardaí or social workers. The stories of rape and abuse detailed in the report are shocking and frightening. Where was the State when 9,000 children died and nothing was done to preserve life? In fact, the State knew what was happening and did nothing. Those involved penny-pinched on food allowances. The State allowed overcrowding. Where other countries had no more than 30 residents to a home, Ireland had as many as 140. We crowded them in and let them die. The institutions run by the State were the worst. The children were the disposable children of their disposable mothers, experimented on and abused. When they were not living in the institutions, many laboured on farms with little consideration for the child. The rules on boarding out were in place from as early as 1927 but they were not always adhered to. In the context of those who died in the institutions, what now of their remains?

I welcome the legislation on interments. I thank the Minister but we need to do more. In Bessborough today, planning permission is being considered for an area of ground where bodies are believed to lie. That is today. Let us do something about that. Where questions remain, the State can find out the detail and step up. The State can accord the interred the rights and dignity they deserved. They were born once. They had a life ahead of them. The State can legislate and demand the records, the State can ensure closure for families, and the State can refer files to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

It is right that we build on the information we have. It is right to give the survivors the opportunity to ensure that their experiences are memorialised and that we educate generations to come, build an archive and have a telling of truth. I ask the Minister to build on his excellent points and to have a memorial and records centre, but as a living, breathing, growing centre where survivors from all institutions can go and tell their stories, have their names recorded and have their experiences documented in their own words. The State should gather the records from the other institutions and establish a commission with the power to compel so that we can have a permanent staff who will gather and interrogate the information from all other institutions so our knowledge of this chapter will continue to grow and, more important, we will continue to learn.

What of today? In the past week, the pieces I found most upsetting were the accounts of rape and abuse in families and communities. I found the lack of attention paid to these by commentators disturbing. It tells me that, despite how far we have come, we are still reluctant to look in the mirror and confront the hidden sexual abuse. At the time described, it was hidden away as a shameful secret of the hapless girl who got pregnant, but what about the girls who were raped and abused and did not get pregnant? What about those raped and abused in the here and now? In our next truth-telling as a society, we need to discuss sexual abuse in our families and communities and establish its prevalence. To me, the silence on this aspect of the report is deafening. Let the legacy of the women of this report be the telling of truth because, insofar as the report is the latest in a series of tellings of truth in our State, we still have a way to go.