Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 6 seeks to remove the subsection that provides that the Government shall not make an order to establish an office of director of authorised intervention if the burial site comprises a burial ground in whole or in part. In doing so, the amendment would ensure that the authorised interventions occur in the greatest possible number of cases. As drafted, principal burial land would not be eligible for intervention if even a small part of the land comprised a regulated burial ground. This amendment expands the provision to ensure that regulated burial lands can be intervened in, where there is a cause to intervene. Subsection (4)(c)(ii) already specifies that interventions should not occur where the land cannot be excavated without disturbing appropriately buried remains. In my mind this seems like a sufficient protection for remains that are buried appropriately.

While I understand the sensitivity with which we must approach disturbing appropriately buried remains, we must balance this with the rights of concerned persons to justice and to a dignified burial. Maintaining the provision that appropriately buried remains should not be disturbed strikes me as an adequate provision in and of itself. This is why I propose a straight deletion of lines 17 and 18.

Amendment No. 7 seeks to ensure that every possible effort is made to excavate inappropriate burials. It is related to some degree to amendment No. 6.

Section 7(4) refers to land that "could not be excavated without disturbing appropriately buried human remains". This amendment adds a small qualifier that the provision would not apply in circumstances where written consent for the excavation was given by living relatives of the person whose remains are buried appropriately. This could be a productive amendment because the current version of the Bill seems to create a barrier to uncovering inappropriately buried remains in the future. One can imagine a scenario where a family may be living in a small town where an institutional burial site is discovered. Perhaps the family had relatives in an institution and a mass burial site is discovered close to one of the family graves or a family plot. One can imagine that the family would want their appropriately buried love ones to rest in peace, but they may also want to desperately know the truth about what happened in the local institution and what happened to relatives who may have been in it. In that case the family might want to give permission for a family grave to be excavated. They might be willing to make that sacrifice to find out the truth about their family, another family's history or their local history. It is with this scenario in mind that I propose a small qualifying amendment, which I hope can be seen as a constructive suggestion.

Amendment No. 8 seeks to expand the context in which an authorised intervention takes place. Currently in legislation an intervention would not take place where recovery of human remains would be unreasonably difficult. Will the Minister clarify what constitutes unreasonably difficult? It seems somewhat unclear to me and the provision seems vague. It is also unclear as to how the perceived difficulty would be assessed and who would assess it. This amendment seeks to delete this vague term from the Bill and replace the relevant subsection with an alternative, which specifies the intervention should progress unless there is a risk of serious physical harm to the persons responsible for the excavation. In my view this substitution strengthens the section through the removal of what is a very vague term. In doing so, the amendment ensures that a greater number of interventions will occur where they are required.