Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It has been widely reported that the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, will come to the House at 6.30 p.m. and that prior to his discussion of the Birth Information and Tracing Bill, he will apologise on behalf of the Government to those affected by illegal birth registrations. While I welcome this apology and what I am about to say is not a criticism of the Minister, I have some concerns about the timing and nature of the apology.

To put it in its context, the special rapporteur on child protection, Professor Conor O'Mahony, has stated that up to 20,000 Irish children may have been affected in this way and that the Government knew about it, collaborated with it through various Departments and officials, and effectively allowed the transport of thousands of Irish children out of the State. It was a shameful episode in Irish history.

I am minded of this because in recent days, I have been writing about the situation in Ukraine, particularly the war in Donbas. One of the concerns raised by the international humanitarian agencies is the movement of Ukrainian children out of Donbas to Russian territory and then being stripped of their documents and further dispersed through the Russian Federation. That is exactly what I am talking about in respect of those affected by illegal birth registrations in this country.

Throughout Europe, there has been a history of transporting children very often for ideological reasons during the Second World War, during the 1950s and during the period of the Soviet Union. What is particularly shameful and pernicious about Ireland is that much of the motivation for the transport of these children was monetary gain on the part of the State and those religious orders that were relied upon to provide services that the State was either unwilling or unable to provide in their absence.

For fear that this apology might be misinterpreted, for fear that its timing and context does not add insult to injury, however unintended, I call on the Taoiseach to apologise in the Dáil on behalf of all the Irish people for the egregious harm visited upon all these Irish citizens, many of whom are elderly people trying to reconstruct their identities while experiencing ill health. It is the very least we owe them.