Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

A number of Senators made that point about how the actions of the Government will be judged and I take it on board. Senator Pauline O'Reilly suggested that an apology may be forthcoming from Galway County Council, and I think that would be appropriate. The theme of the responsibility of local authorities in all of this was one on which Senator Boyhan also touched. Many of us here have served on local authorities and can think of the things we did and the functions we had around parks and planning. Those bodies were intrinsically involved in the payment of the fees for and management of these homes decades ago. As Senator Pauline O'Reilly said, one council met in one of the mother and baby homes. That is at variance with what I think about when I think about the local authority on which I served. I am of the view that an apology would be appropriate in that case and I hope others might also think of adopting that approach.

Senator Boyhan, as ever, spoke with great passion and made an extremely considered contribution. He made the point that this commission has looked at just one part of a much wider failure on behalf of the State in the context of children who were in care of different sorts. He suggested that we, in our response to this, need to be aware of the fact that there are many institutions excluded from the ambit of this report. He made an apt point about the reappointment of Dr. Niall Muldoon as Ombudsman for Children. We acknowledge that having institutions such as the Office of the Ombudsman for Children to speak for children is a step forward but, on the other hand, we recognise that that office and other bodies still find fault with the State. We must always be conscious that we can do better for young people.

Senator Boyhan made another point, this was picked up on by Senators Boylan, Ruane and Bacik, with regard to the establishment of the restorative recognition scheme - we are working on that at the moment - in that we have to be very conscious of the mistakes that were made in the past as regards design. I commit now to going back and looking at problems that arose. The issue of the gagging order has been highlighted by a number of Senators and I will go back and look at that and see how we can avoid mistakes like that being made in the future.

A number of Senators also brought up the issue of the vaccine trials and engagement with GlaxoSmithKline. I have not written to GlaxoSmithKline at this point but I will go back and consider what direct engagement my Department should have with that company.

Senators McGreehan, Bacik and others drew attention to the issue of the leak and how devastating it was to survivors during a week that was always going to be full of trauma. The leak opened that trauma anew and ripped a plaster off a wound in a brutal manner. As I have said, an investigation is being undertaken by the Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach. It is essential for that to happen.

Senators McGreehan and Seery Kearney also mentioned criminal acts. Full copies of this report are with both the Director of Public Prosecutions and An Garda.

Senators also asked about my engagement with the congregations and charities. As already stated, I have written to them and spoken about the need for an apology and a contribution to the redress scheme, but also access to records. That is particularly important in the context of the importance of information for so many of the survivors. As has been said in the commission's report, many of these institutions took extremely detailed records and it is important that those records are brought into State control as part of this national archive that we are seeking to create.I will engage with them on that specific point as well.

Senator Seery Kearney spoke about the need to have practical supports in place. The counselling supports, in the form of the national counselling service, are in place now. I spoke with the director of the HSE who is in charge of the national counselling service to reassure myself that that was working. It is up and running. The national counselling service is a weekday service that operates from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. but for the next six weeks at least, an out-of-hours service called Connect Counselling has also been put in place in recognising the trauma felt. Things are so raw this week but people will have the chance to reflect and emotions may come to them in the next number of weeks. We can look at bringing back the out-of-hours service and elongating that more. The service provided by the national counselling service can be for short-, medium- and long-term counselling. Survivors of mother and baby homes are regarded as a prioritised group now within the receipt of these services. That is important as one response that is in place immediately. During the debate on the database legislation, Senators Boylan and Bacik asked for that to be put in place.

Senator Seery Kearney also spoke about the need to provide people with the right to know who they are and that was a theme of a lot of the contributions. To be clear, the database will arrive in my Department from 28 February. We have worked intensively to make sure we have proper general data protection regulation or GDPR compliant policies ready from when we receive it so that we can deal appropriately with the many subject access requests that we will take. These subject access requests will be handled on the basis of a presumption of a right to access under the GDPR. It is only the potential limitations on that as set out in Article 15.4, that is, an interference with the rights and freedoms of others, that will be the consideration our GDPR officer will have in determining if there is any potential restriction to be placed on the access to the right. We are looking to publish those before 28 February and I assure Senators that we are in regular contact with the Data Protection Commissioner. We are working our way through the various data protection impact assessments, DPIAs. As Senators will know, that is a living document. Consequently, we are working closely with the Data Protection Commissioner to make sure that we get that right. Those rights will come in from 28 February. As some Senators have said, that is not going to answer all questions because as we know, the commission's archive does not cover all institutions. That is why the information and tracing legislation is also important to cover wider circumstances as well. It is why the information and tracing legislation is also important as regards the national contact preference register and putting that on a statutory footing to allow for those circumstances where either a mother or a child, for example, does not want contact made by her child or by his or her mother in order that there is a potential that this can be registered there. In as much as people have a right to information, and we believe that is central, information and contact are two different things. People's preferences as regards contact should be referenced and respected. I believe that we need to take that contact preference register, which is a very good service but is not on a statutory footing now, and place it on a statutory footing. Both Senators Bacik and Boylan referenced Private Members' legislation, which I would be happy to look at. Both probably cover the same area. Deputy Funchion mentioned it earlier on in our meeting. I am very happy to look at those.

Senator Bacik focused on the concerns. Many have raised some concerns. I stated in my own introduction, as regards the executive summary, particularly how it seems to clash in ways with some of the wider part of the work and I do think that is important. Many Senators have remarked on the fact that huge knowledge, benefit and insight into what happened are contained in those 3,000 pages.I am lucky, to an extent, in having had the opportunity since October to go through it in detail. One thing for me, and Senators Boylan and Mullen touched on it, is that there were people who were raising concerns about what was happening in these institutions. Senator Mullen referred to Alice Litster, who I mentioned in the Dáil last week. I thought that was important because there was not complete silence. There were people vigorously raising the issue year after year. Alice Litster worked as an inspector for 30 years and, as Senator Mullen mentioned, across all the chapters looking at the institutions, her name is there time and again, flagging the problems. On Sean Ross, she was saying that huge numbers of children were being sent for adoption in the United States, for example, yet this was ignored. It shows to me in concrete terms the failure of State bodies to listen to warnings raised by the State. It is important, regarding criticism of the language in the executive summary and other points, to bear in mind that there is real value. Senator Fitzpatrick and others have spoken of the shocking death toll. Each chapter has a descriptive chapter on that institution as well as a statistical chapter. Numbers are very cold, but take the ages of the women - girls - going into these institutions and the death tolls over the years. We should bear that in mind in our consideration of the overall report.

Senator Bacik drew particular attention to forced labour. Irrespective of what the executive summary says, the commission stated that certain categories of women should be eligible for the redress on the basis of the work they did. That is any woman who was in a county home, any woman who was in Tuam or any woman who was put outside of the institution. The commission identified that there was forced labour in many of the institutions and regarded that this justified specific restitution for the women involved. The same applies to forced adoption. Reading the accounts to the confidential committee, I cannot but understand that women had absolutely no choice in giving their child up for adoption, be it because of the pressure from the institution, the fact that they had been abandoned by their family, perhaps pressure from clergy in the area and, of course, the fact that the State had for so long failed to give any sort of financial support to unmarried mothers. These women had absolutely no choice in their children being given up for adoption.

Several Senators have spoken on a records centre and the commitment given in October to a national memorial and records centre. We reiterate our commitment to that. We will engage with survivors regarding the location and how the material in that record centre will be handled. We must remember that we must protect individuals' privacy and balance that with the individuals who have given testimony. I am sure Senators will know of some survivors who do not want their own very private information being looked at by researchers and the like. We must respect that as well. I have always thought, influenced by the work done by others on what this centre would look like, that this would be an academic centre in terms of the records but also a place where we can provide a living history of what happened in these institutions. The Leader and others have spoken of the need for the testimonies of women to be heard and to be the part of the report that shines out most. The people who curate museums know how to bring together apt and appropriate audiovisual representations of history. They could go a long way in ensuring that every personal account, all 550 of them, could be read onto the record and that there as a constant oral reminder of what happened.This area is not my forte. I believe, however, that those who understand how best to represent history in ways that are not just words on a page but are visual, audio or a combination of media could go a long way to making sure that what our generation and future generations see is the lived truth of the women and children who were in these and so many other institutions. As I said, the Government has given a commitment to develop that and to work with survivors' groups to ensure we have an archive of that knowledge and a wider sense of commemoration is also provided for. I look forward to continued engagement with Members of the House next week.