Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Senators Blaney and McGreehan on bringing forward the motion and on their exposition in respect of it. I welcome the victims' families to the Gallery. I met them briefly as I came in. Our hearts go out to them. They are very welcome, and they have all our support. I thank the Minister for indicating in his speech that he will meet the families and that process will be put in motion. I am delighted that is the case. I want to acknowledge that.

I support the call of my colleague from County Cavan, Senator Wilson, for everybody to come forward with information. Anybody with the slightest piece of information should please come forward with it. Indeed, I support his call and the general call for anyone in a position of leadership capable of encouraging people to come forward with this information to please do so.It is crucial that the information be brought forward. That is a vital step.

The Minister's meeting with the victims' families is good and the motion is good but the information needs to flow so that something can be done. If the information flows, of course something will be done, in the sense that the bodies will be recovered and all that goes with that. I acknowledge what my colleague from Cavan said. I think it is fair. Senator Blaney referred to the fact that his family are very invested in this question, as his uncle John P. Wilson with whom I served in public life in Cavan and I knew very well, was the first victims commissioner. That is why the family have a particular relationship with this question and I want to acknowledge that.

It is a shocking thing that we talk about somebody looking forward to a funeral but nothing is more important for people than to gain a level of closure. As the Acting Chair mentioned, it is important for people to have a place to go to visit their relatives, to have their religious ceremonies and have all that goes with that. It is so embedded in the human condition, our religion and Irish culture. It is central to how and what we are. One of the biggest days of the year in our local communities, which brings home people from all over to the local area, is cemetery Sunday. People come back to visit their family graves and to be around family on that day. It is an important day for many people.

Our hearts go out to the victims' families. Our hearts go out first of all for the tragedy and the wrong that was done to families but also for the fact that they now have this ongoing pain of not having access to graves or a ceremony. We can only imagine what people are going through. Nothing we can say is adequate but it behoves us in our job to see what we can do to be of support. The Minister's meeting is an important step in that and I am glad it is happening.

The next important step is that those in public life who are in any position to elicit information should do so. For the families, there is deep trauma, struggle and pain. Psychologists and people who understand these things a lot better than us say that when trauma hits a family it has effects that are felt for three generations. That is trauma as we commonly understand it. The trauma that the victims' families experienced is beyond anything that one can even imagine or contemplate.

I commend Senator Blaney who is a northern man with huge interest in this issue, as does his family. I also commend Senator McGreehan for bringing this issue to the House. It should be done periodically until the very last victim is recovered and the victim's family has found comfort. There is not much more that can be said. One could hear it in people's reactions and speeches that there is a level of trauma even for people at the distance we are at from it. If there is a level of stress and trauma at that distance, we can only attempt to imagine what it is like for those for whom it is central and everyday reality. I hope that some good will come out of it this motion.