Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome to the House. I congratulate him for bringing this Bill forward. At the outset, I will remark on the work of our library service for providing excellent briefing material. I compliment the joint Oireachtas committee that sat and deliberated on this issue and I remember those parents who adopted and fostered children. In many case, in fact in most cases, they were not demons. They were genuine decent people.

Fifty years ago was the first time I encountered a young woman in Galway who was pregnant and was being sent away. I think about the weekends in particular in my elder lemon years when my three granddaughters, Ellie, Isabelle and Alice visit the house. I get joy and pleasure out of watching them deliver their first words, taking their first steps, coming in to argue with me now that they are a little older and putting me in my box. I love those moments. How many children and mothers who went through this system we are talking about never had those moments? They never had a stupid grandfather buying them chocolate when he should not and stupid things like that. I grew up with a father who was extremely Victorian in many ways. I remember his attitude to girls who fell pregnant - that is the way he would describe it - in Galway. He used to ask what all the fuss was about and say they only did what was natural. That was his attitude and yet he was Victorian. You could not mention sex in my house. My father would take off out the door like the clappers. He would hear the word sex and it was time to leave. However, when he would hear about a girl being pregnant he would say "what is all the fuss was about? She only did what was natural". However, we created a society that sadly most in this room are too young to remember. When a girl got pregnant, the father of the child took off to England or wherever was as far as he could go in order not be in any way associated with it. The girl in question would be sent off wherever. We are dealing with mother and baby homes. We are not dealing with the women who were sent to spend their pregnancies with a family and deliver the child. The moment the child was delivered it was taken from them and put up for adoption and they never heard from or saw that child again. Two people I know well who went through that experience both have great relationships now with the child they gave up 40 odd years ago. It is great that can happen.

When I look at the recommendations and especially the six month rule, I wonder why we always have to put a date on a calendar. Why can we not just say, if a person was born in that situation, if a person served time in one of these godforsaken mother and baby homes, that person should be treated on an equal basis?

I get annoyed when I hear the religious congregations being constantly pounded because 5% or 10% of the religious were bad people. The rest were bloody good people who did a great job in this country, but unfortunately we farmed out the things we did not want to touch, such as mother and baby homes and industrial schools. We farmed them out and we really did not care what happened inside them, as long as we did not have to look in. People who served in this House who were professionals such as doctors, nurses and teachers were all aware of what was going on in these institutions and places and they did nothing. A woman contacted me who spent time in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home. She told me that she does not recognise what is spoken about and says she had a relatively easy time there. The other side of that coin is that I could find ten women who have a totally different story. We have to be very careful.

We were talking about the boarded out scheme. The waiver should be removed from the scheme. The bottom line is that all Members have been receiving countless emails in the past few days. As legislators we should pause, take a little time. The Minister should get a few people to work with him to improve the Bill and make it a Bill that is worthy of the people who were demonised. I still think about the girls who left Galway. They were not only demonised by the system. They were demonised by the people. They were demonised by the fathers who made them pregnant and bloody well walked away from them and left them with nothing. Something that really annoys me is that when a girl gets pregnant she is demonised and called all sorts of bloody names. Where are the fathers who fathered those children? Has anyone ever seen a father come forward and say he is the father of a child and that he left that poor woman destitute? Did anyone ever do that? No.