Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Boyhan. It is very apt that he is the Chair this evening. It shows the seriousness of the issue and the fact that it is real people and real testimonies that are at the heart of this report. I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. It is good that he is here to listen to the contribution of Senators. This is really only the beginning of the healing process. I am not sure that a State apology, a commission of investigation or even a redress scheme could ever adequately compensate or repair the hurt, harm and damage that the State and its institutions and the church inflicted upon the women and children of this country for so many years. It is right and proper that every horrible detail is laid bare for us to know about, hear about and to remember, lest we ever forget, that a very short time ago, the way that we treated women and children was nothing short of cruel and inhumane. As a State we were complicit in what was effectively mass human trafficking, social engineering and the harmful and cruel treatment of unmarried mothers because they were somehow lesser than everybody else in society.

I acknowledge that while a lot of work went into this report, the feedback on the report from the survivors and their families has not been positive. Questions remain to be answered by the commissioners themselves over some of the language. I do not think the Minister is in a position to answer the questions that we might have about certain phraseology used in the report. I refer to the statement that there was no evidence that children were harmed in these institutions. That is an obscene statement and one that is nothing but insulting to the survivors of those homes. Direct testimony is evidence. People recounting their direct experience is evidence. Are we looking for CCTV footage? Are we looking for photographic evidence? Who are the commissioners to decide that the evidence is not there? Were they so long in the bubble of doing this report that they became desensitised and cold to the experience of the people that lived through this experience?

Questions must be asked about the accounts that some survivors gave that were not properly accounted for in the investigation. I refer to questions that were apparently put to survivors that were never put to them.We cannot simply brush over those things. There is now an onus on the Government and the State to address those questions properly. I reiterate my call that the commissioners involved in preparing this report should, take questions from survivors, the public and the media. They are not in isolation. They are publicly known now; we know who they are. They were paid well for their work. They were given ample time to complete their work. I do not think the State received from them the level of workmanship that would have been expected on that report.

I move on to the contents of the report. I wish to discuss those mothers and babies who may not be covered in this report. I refer in particular to my county, Mayo. In the early 1900s mothers and babies were cared for in the county homes. In the 1920 the county home in Castlebar was home, if one can call it that, to women and children who were cast aside by their families and by society. I have since read that they were actually referred to in the Poor Law Commission as "inmates" in the county home. They were to be separated from other inmates who were referred to - those who were poor, sick and infirm. Discussions then ensued in the county home in the 1920s and 1930s as to where these inmates could be moved to that would not be a significant burden on ratepayers so that they would not have to pay too much to cover the cost of looking after them.

It was actually suggested that they could be housed in derelict buildings. In the end it was decided to ship them off to the mother and baby home in Tuam. Women and children from Mayo who passed through the mother and baby home in Tuam are probably in that burial site. I was glad to see Galway County Council unreservedly apologise for its role as the governing local authority at the time for what happened in that facility. Equally Mayo County Council needs to do the same. Simply because it managed to ship them off to a different county does not absolve it of its responsibility in this regard. Certainly, questions remain to be answered. I know there is a burial site where the county home is. It is not marked, and we do not know what is there. There is a history there. Mayo's history is like that of any other county. Over the years many women were removed from their communities and families and put into these facilities. They were made to work for little or no remuneration and had their children taken from them. They were mistreated every minute they were there.

This report is a start, but it needs to be re-examined. I support the call for an independent review of the report. At the end of the day the lesson is that we must listen to survivors and their families. It is their views that matter, not ours. One of us saying that the report is good and fine does not cut it. If they are not happy with it, we need to redo it. I make a plea to the Minister that the redress scheme we put in place not be caught up in red tape and that people not be made to jump through hoops to access the compensation that is rightly theirs. It needs to be made as easy as possible to come through that scheme. Every effort must be made to facilitate people and we should not compound the hurt anymore. While no redress scheme or apology will ever fully heal the hurt that is there, let us not cause any more harm now when we know what we need to do to make this right.