Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, recognise the Acting Chairperson's position today both as the leader of my group and as somebody who has been brave enough to put his personal life in the public domain. I welcome the Minister to the House.

It took five years to produce this report and I am sure those who produced it believed it to be a considered and complete report, but I agree with most other speakers who said that they must be willing to go public and take questions on the report. The late poet, Eavan Boland, said that in Ireland the past was a place of whispers, shadows and vanishings while history is the story of heroes. The report has unearthed a dark, distant past in this country. Personal testimonies of survivors of these homes are harrowing. They show us that the oppression of women who became pregnant outside marriage was brutal, widespread and systemic.

There has been talk about redress in this debate. A redress scheme must encompass everybody. Whether somebody was five minutes in one of these places, it must encompass all of them. There cannot be a cut-off date whereby somebody is entitled and somebody else is not.

The system in this country labelled unmarried pregnant women as sinners and their children as illegitimate. It stripped the women of their dignity and almost dehumanised them in the process. One of the most difficult to read sections in the report relates to the rampant infant mortality. Over 9,000 children, each one a citizen of this State, died in the care of the church and State, many without the dignity of a funeral and a marked grave. If it was not for the tireless work of Ms Catherine Corless, the commission may never have been established. There still may be outstanding questions to be answered.

While it is very distressing to learn about the ways in which the mothers and babies were treated, it is equally distressing to listen to recent Government commentary on the report. The apologies have come too early. Let us see a redress system and care put in place for those who were in these homes and, having proved we are sorry by our actions, we can then apologise. I have no time for these apologies where it is a case of, "I have said 'sorry' so let us move on". That is not good enough. The response to the publication of the report by the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, was that it shames Irish society. He said that women who were "pregnant outside of marriage, some very young, some victims of rape, were not supported by their families or by the father of the child. They were forced to turn to the church and State for refuge ...". I was in a house on the night that a girl who was working away from home rang her mother to tell her she was pregnant. The girl's father was a stern, Victorian man and I remember the family that night being in panic about how they were going to deal with it and how they would tell the father. As soon as that man heard it, the first thing he said was: "Bring my daughter home and let me look after her". Not every family disowned their child and I take grave exception to the practice of calling out families as having deserted their children.

As regards the Catholic Church, I listened to the archbishop and the Primate of All Ireland say that we should not take it out on the church. Then we read the report and see that when Mayo County Council wanted to take children - boys up to the age of five years and girls up to the age of seven years - out of Tuam the response of the holy nuns was that if it took the children out, it would not be able to send another girl there. It was outrageous.

I cannot agree with the report's simplistic explanation that the women should have been at home with their families, but they were rejected by those families.They were not in all cases rejected by their families. It is deeply insulting to those families who looked after their daughters.

We passed legislation recently in this House against the type of coercive treatment that went on in this State and about which we are talking. It defines it as threats of humiliation, intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish or frighten the victim. That is exactly what we did. Certainly, when I was a boy growing up there were no girls pregnant in Galway; they were all sent away on a holiday and when they came back nine months later nobody dared to ask where they had been. I believe that for the commission, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to take the view that it was families who failed women and children gaslights the survivors and undermines their own memory and testimony. I would, however, apportion due blame to the fathers of children. When I was growing up I knew fellas who had made girls pregnant and then took to the high hills leaving them swinging in the wind. This is not to take away from what Senator Byrne has said. There were some very decent lads who had made girls pregnant and wanted to do the right thing but between church and State they were prevented access to the girls they had made pregnant. Let us be honest about what took place in this State.

I think of the stories. When the Bessborough story came out on television a girl I knew from many years ago, who I thought had gone to a family when she was pregnant, contacted me to tell me she had been in Bessborough. That girl is now haunted by her time in Bessborough. I am going to run out of time and there is so much I want to say about this. I am damned if I am going to allow families be accused of rejecting their own children. I am damned if I am going to accept the word of the church that has said "We did not do this" and "We did not do that". I have read what the report says about the Bishop of Tuam who said that a mother and baby home could not be close to a street because people know what happens to those girls when they see a man. For God's sake let the church take some responsibility.

On redress, there is one crowd that nobody is talking about. We have spoken about the church and the State, but what about the chemical companies that developed a vaccine to use on the young children who were in these homes and had no say? It is time for GlaxoSmithKline and the other medical vaccine companies to come forward and take responsibility for what they did. I commend the Minister on what he is doing. The Minister is a decent guy and he took this on after five years. He has taken a lot of stick. I commend the Minister on being here today and I commend him on the work he is doing and the way he has tried to deal with this. I ask the Minister not to make them beg for redress.