Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I informally said to the Cathaoirleach earlier that nothing could be more apt than Senator Boyhan, who has been so courageous and eloquent in his own testimony, chairing this session. I welcome the Minister. I have listened to him on many occasions and I know he is patently sincere and committed to doing the right thing. Two parallel approaches to the report of the commission are needed. We must first remember, acknowledge and apportion and accept blame. We must also give people access to their family history and all data and information, including birth certificates, medical histories and everything else. We must give payment, redress and retribution to people. It cannot be miserly and, like my colleagues, I advise the Minister to make such redress generous and easy to get. We owe these people no less.We did such wrongs and now there is a chance to do the wholesome and right thing. Free counselling and medical cards should be available, as should appropriate housing in appropriate locations, which may involve transfers. In other words, these people should have a holistic response.

Turning to my first response to the commission’s report and what is required, this involves remembering. We must not right the wrongs out of history. It is clear from the personal testimonies in the report that the treatment of mothers and babies in mother and baby homes was barbaric, cruel, sadistic and inhuman. It is as much part of our history as the glorious and glamorous. Let us make no attempt to fudge that. The remembering should be in the proper burial of the up to 9,000 babies who died. I am not saying they are all improperly buried but most are. That should happen. That should mean the development of a proper remembrance centre, as has been mooted in Seán MacDermott Street. Elsewhere, there should be commemorative plaques and commemorative ceremonies in each local authority area and generally, there should be a State acknowledgement. There should be support for students who do research in this area and for any centres that remember this and any people who write about it, recall it and support this. We must be generous and imaginative. I ask the Minister to look at that whole area of remembrance.

It is important for us to remember too that it has a civilising effect on people to remember what was wrong in the past. The acknowledgement must come from the religious. It came from the Bon Secours Sisters and that must be built on. Archbishop Eamon Martin’s apology is welcome in this context. However, the acknowledgement must also come from State employees who, either in a county home or by co-operating with the incarceration, have a guilt. The acknowledgement must also come from our people, the political class. We did not do enough about it either. The acknowledgement of the wrong must come from all of us who lived through that time when respectability, property ownership and misogyny ranked much more highly than the welfare of the abandoned mothers and babies. I feel personally ashamed to say that I lived through that period and that we allowed all this to happen, to paraphrase President Reagan, on our watch.

Much criticism has arisen from the survivors and political leaders led by our colleague, the Leader of the House, Senator Doherty, regarding the language and tenor of the report and the way it was dealt with. It is a pity that legalese was allowed to replace plain speaking. The legalese could have been an appendix or a footnote. In a legal sense it is stated that mothers were not forced into homes. Of course, they were not arrested on foot of a court order, but their expulsion from the family home and the lack of any other State support gave them only two options – abortion or to enter the penal mother and baby homes. Similarly, in legal terms, the report can confirm that again mothers were not forced to have children adopted but where was the choice? Again, they had no choice. The mother was alone, defenceless, without resources and under pressure from all sides to adopt. Only semantics can remove force from this. Needless to say, there are people, religious and lay, who did the right thing and acted in a humane way. They can quietly and privately take a bow and should do so but that does not mean we can distract from those who have done the wrong thing to vulnerable babies and their mothers.

We should openly admit that a wrong was done that needs righting. The process is just starting now and I see it as being a two-pronged approach. The first is that we are remembering and acknowledging in a very public, holistic and proper way. We are even allowing further testimony. We are doing all that. The second is that we compensate in a generous, holistic and unmiserly way that will not be difficult to access. These people experienced enough hardship as vulnerable people. It is time they were the recipients of kindness from the State.