Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have the same question. We still have not received any justification. The justification has simply been that we can look back and see a worse proposal made by someone else and a worse decision before that as regards the failure of the commission to properly acknowledge the damage and abuse. We can look at worse decisions. We can go back to all the original decisions about the mother and baby homes. There was a cascade of bad decisions. None of the decisions previously made are a justification. In fairness, in certain areas, such as access to records, I recognise that some of the Minister's decisions have taken us a leap forward. However, incrementalism is not a justification. The fact we wanted to arbitrarily exclude women who had spent less than six months - with respect to the medical piece we still do not adequately recognise the experience of all women who gave birth in the institutions - or that it was on the table does not justify a bad idea. I heard one reference to other institutions having six months and that period being common. Abuse was commonplace. That is why other countries in Europe are struggling with the kinds of processes we are struggling with, facing up to institutional abuse. That is one of the only arguments I have heard and it is a bad one because it means that if we set out a bad parameter and say, not in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s but in this modern legislation in 2023, we think it is okay for children to have experienced these kinds of abusive, bad and traumatic situations in the first six months of their lives in the mother and baby homes, we are sending a bad signal to other countries across the world that are dealing with institutional abuse. We have a responsibility to make good decisions and move out of the narrow tunnel of small ambition gains from a diminishing frame. We have not heard from a child psychology, paediatric, trauma expert or scientific perspective any rationale for the exclusion of those who spent less than six months in an institution. As I stated, we know there is a raft of rationales, including what survivors told us they wanted, what we know about the importance of the first six months of a child's life and what we know about the first six months of these children's lives. There are a lot of reasons for them to be included. We have not heard any reason for their exclusion. With respect to the Minister, the fact that someone wanted to exclude even more people is not a reason. The fact that other countries may also have done a bad thing is not a reason.