Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the contribution he made at the outset of this debate because his determination to do the right thing by our survivors and their families and children is evident every time he speaks. I do not in any way underestimate the complexity of the task the commission of inquiry into mother and baby homes undertook. Much of the report is a valuable and comprehensive history of a period of Ireland's history that most people would want to forget and pretend never happened. It is, however, something we will never forget. By God, it is very hard to fathom that a commission of inquiry established by the State to reveal and investigate a sordid, horrible past has caused so much hurt in the past week because of the report it published, particularly its executive summary. The Minister should be in no doubt that that hurt is incredibly real and raw and it is evident in the painful stories we have all heard the women and their children share with us over the airwaves in the past week. This group of women has been galvanised by the commission's response to them. They will no longer stand in the shadows of Ireland's history. I will go out on a limb and suggest this group of women is supported by every single woman and nearly every man in the country as a result of the wrongdoing that has been done to them.

The report lacks empathy. It is legalistic - overbearingly so - cold and callous. Some of the assertions it makes are not just hurtful but downright disrespectful and, in many places, wrong or inaccurate. In many cases, the report completely ignores the testimony of the women's lived experiences. We invited these survivors to come forward to what we told them would be a safe space where they would be able to share their experiences with us in order that the State would learn from them, make reparations and ensure this kind of horrid behaviour never happened again. We then have the gall to tell them they are wrong, that some of their memories are not accurate and to discount their testimonies. We nearly told them again that they do not matter or they do not count. In places the report actually questions the accuracy of survivors' memories. It tells them their memories and lived experiences, as recounted, are wrong. Imagine being a survivor and being told the story one came forward to tell is not true or real. I cannot even begin to imagine how that must make these survivors feel. I want to tell them on the record of the House that we fundamentally believe them. There is not a doubt in my mind and, I believe, in the minds of everybody else here and everybody in the nation that the experiences they recounted to us are absolutely real. In some cases, they probably did not go as far as telling us the cruel and sordid treatment they experienced.

The report is filled with the mantra that there is no evidence. It states there was no evidence of collusion, forced incarceration or forced adoptions, yet we have the evidence of 550 women who were brave enough to come forward and tell of their experience of being called housemates when they were incarcerated. They were not free to leave. The testament to that is the women who told us that those who were lucky enough to escape were dragged back, kicking and screaming, to the institutions.

As other Members stated, the report suggests that the homes were a refuge, albeit a harsh one, when no refuge was offered by the women's families and that the women were not asked to do anything in the homes that they would not have been asked to do in their own homes. We know that is not true. Heavily pregnant and post-pregnant women in Bessborough were forced on their hands and knees to cut the bloody grass with nail clippers. Ireland was a cold, cruel place but I do not know of any home where loved ones were treated in that way. The chapter on the confidential commission report lays bare the cruel, cold and harsh reality of what happened in mother and baby homes and county homes.

The claim that women were not forced to give up their babies is the most callous. If someone does not or cannot give consent, how is that not forced? The report appears not to appreciate the concept of consent, which is particularly hard to understand given the number of women and children incarcerated in mother and baby homes who were rape victims. How is it that pregnant girls as young as 12 were dropped at the doors of these homes and gardaí were never called? I appreciate that the Garda Commissioner is looking into the investigation but that is generations too late in some of these cases.

The rationale offered by the report for the huge disparity between infant mortality rates in the homes and in the community was that the crowding of vulnerable children allowed mini-epidemics of infection to occur, as if that happened by accident or was not deliberate.Many of the documents seen by the commission reflect the implicit, almost automatic, assumption that public policy should be in line with the views and the wishes of the then Catholic Church. Such was the relationship that existed for generations between the church and the State, yet the writers of the report chose in the executive summary to place the greatest burden of responsibility on the father and on the families, as well as on society and community and, by God, that has really angered and saddened our survivors.

Of the 923 babies that died in Bessborough, we know the whereabouts of 64 of them. In Tuam, without an excavation, we will never know, yet the commission said it does not consider further excavation or investigation is warranted.

I am running out of speaking time. I want to say to the Minister sincerely that what is required now, in my humble opinion, is that we invite the survivors to write their own executive summary, in their own words and their own language, to allow their representation of their own testimonies to stand alongside the report. We should, in fact, invite the survivors who offered testimony to have their factual transcripts published and laid alongside the archive, in order that the commission’s report can be put in context. We should clearly lay out a timetable for the details of the Government's commitments and reparations, the adoption and tracing legislation and the redress scheme. Perhaps the most important thing that we can do for women is to say we will give them a commitment to excavations, to DNA tracing and to a proper, dignified burial for all of those thousands of babies whose lives were lost, because we certainly did not show them any dignity in the history of this country.