Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In relation to the co-location issue, what I am struggling with is the fact that we are talking about hospitals and county homes but they were operating under the same management. Did they not have the same structures and umbrella? Mother and baby homes were stand-alone institutions but what were the structures in county homes? There were two separate institutions operating within the one site. If I was a pregnant woman would I go to the hospital for maternity services and then be transferred to the county home for whatever my particular circumstances were? Maybe when I was in the maternity services part, I received particular treatment. If they were both working under the same ethos, then brutality would not just begin when the woman stepped into the county home. There had to be collusion because there was communication and facilitation between the two entities. There is something else going on when we are talking about co-location sites because there is communication between the two facilities. Let us say I am in the hospital and am refused medical care or my child is taken from my arms and never brought back to me. Then I am put into the county home part but the other brutality and cruelty pieces happened in the maternity services part. Then when I later sign a waiver, I am signing that waiver based on the circumstances of the county home. If we are going to separate the two facilities for the purposes of this legislation, how can we then not separate the two facilities for the purposes of the waiver? We are saying that the maternity services are separate and do not make us a "relevant person". When we move into the county home, that applies and allows us to become a "relevant person". However, in the maternity services other things may have happened like racial stuff, which is not recognised. We are separating them here but are putting them back together for the purposes of the waiver. This does not make sense to me and makes the legislation incoherent. It is unique because the others may be more specific when we are looking at covering circumstances by waivers because they are just stand-alone institutions but a maternity services site in a co-location spot is still part of the one system. That would have to be recognised in the context of a "relevant person". If not, then under a waiver whatever happened to a person in the maternity services part is not covered by the waiver because it is not covered by "relevant person".