Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is no problem. I will start by thanking the many people who have taken the time to speak to me over the past while on this particularly sensitive topic. I thank the Acting Chairperson in particular for talking to me last week and being kind with his thoughts and experiences. I thank some other people, including Samantha Long, who has been an eternal voice on this issue, for being so generous in publicly sharing her story again and again.I thank people like Maeve O'Rourke and all the legal experts who have given so freely of their expertise in this area. I thank Susan Lohan and all those who so eloquently advocated for justice for a long time. I thank the many survivors who reached out to me with their stories. I cannot undo their pasts. I cannot take away their pain. I cannot give them all their lost time back. However, I can be part of a movement of people who are going to advocate fiercely for survivors' rights to justice, to information, to an identity, to funding and to have dignity in their lives in future after they were so cruelly denied it before.

Much discourse in recent days has concerned how survivors felt they were not believed, that their testimony was not taken into account or their truth was not treated with the care and respect it deserved. I put it on the record that I believe the survivors. I believe their testimony. I believe the testimony they have shared about the horrors they experienced and I believe their memories and recollections. I believe their pain. I believe their anger. I believe their hurt. I believe them.

We must recognise that we have go beyond saying we are sorry. Apologies are well and good, and they are extraordinarily necessary. Many people I spoke to said last week's apology was so very needed. However, an apology given when the survivors had not even seen the report, nor the summary of the report, and some people have spoken as well of the problematic nature of that summary of the report, just does not cut it. There needs to be action. All the actions I will suggest could be taken have come from conversations that I have had with survivors, advocates or legal experts or they are reflected in the report. These are not things that I have plucked out of thin air.

Survivors need access to hard copies of this report. We must think about the composition of this group of survivors from the homes, and in that regard we must consider the accessibility of this report and its summary. Survivors also need access to their birth certificates and restitution of their identities. We must get rid of the 1973 cut-off point for redress. My colleague, Senator Sherlock, spoke eloquently on that point. Survivors need access to information and this must be a priority. Counselling and other elements cannot be provided until people know who they are. Access to information also includes access to baptismal records. People must be given access to State and privately held administrative files. I and several legal experts believe that withholding those records would be considered a violation of general data protection regulation, GDPR, legislation.

Survivors need access to redress. I do not believe that the 2015 Act to provide healthcare for Magdalen survivors was sufficient. Survivors must get the standard Health (Amendment) Act, HAA, card. My colleague, Senator Sherlock, also talked about Sean McDermott Street and a national archive. This would allow for an ongoing, survivor-led investigation and a fact-finding process for survivors. It is important as well that archival and memorial resources must not be restricted to Dublin. We have heard accounts here of the experience of survivors from all over the country, so it is important that it is not just a Dublin-based archival record that will be established. We need further investigation and interrogation of illegal adoptions and to compare the legal adoption numbers with other available data.

We cannot go back in time but we can take actions to give survivors dignity and support for the rest of their lives. I also want to reflect on the intergenerational impact these experiences have had. Senator Boyhan very kindly talked to me about that aspect last week. There are survivors of these homes trying to live their lives with the trauma they must process every day. That trauma can lead to personal difficulties and relationship difficulties and can impact on survivors' spouses, their children and their families. A whole cohort of people surrounded by survivors is also affected by this trauma, therefore, and they also desperately need support.

I am struck by one aspect of this situation especially. I do not think we comprehend the breadth of work that still needs to be done. I refer to the amount of investigation that remains to be done and how much more we need to do even to begin to uncover all that has happened. We must also look to international examples of how other countries have dealt with their pasts and atrocities presided over by the state. What can we learn about how other nations have faced their pasts to look forward and ensure that such cruelties never happen again? Has contact been made with experts abroad? Has any investigation been undertaken to examine how we can learn from their experiences?

I want to comment on a final point that many people have already addressed. I refer to the insistence that the Church and the State did not force women into the mother and baby homes and that there was no forced adoption or coercion. I speak for many people when I say that those statements are incredible, almost audacious. My colleague, Senator Craughwell, put it correctly when he said that this is gaslighting survivors. In the same week that we have had the first person convicted and sentenced for coercive control, a crime for which I believe a twelve-and-a-half-year sentence was handed down, I find it extraordinary that we can recognise coercive control as a crime but not cast our eyes back into our grisly past and see the deep coercion that took place in those homes.When a person is left with no options, no choices and no way out, that is coercion. For context, we are now in the third decade of the century after the last home closed. That is a long time for us still not to have got to grips with this. We have not yet learned from our mistakes, and I am referring to direct provision and the need to give access to birth certs. There is an awful lot more we must do and we really must learn from the past. There is a great amount of work that needs to be done. We cannot undo the wrongs of the past but we can step up to our obligations to try to give dignity and respect to the survivors and their families into the future.