Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Its use was as a place where women were incarcerated and gave birth, and where their children were taken away from them. Some of these women came from county homes and institutions. I do not want to be more explicit than that. Their children were taken from them and shipped out to these institutions, and they stayed in these institutions for up to 15, 16 or 17 years.

These are facts. The Minister's advisers have let him down badly if he believes that is the case. I do not know how he could believe the concluding year was 1935. We can produce records. I was born in St. Kevin's in 1961. I know people who were born there in 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1965. I know of one institution that received up to 70 people from St. Kevin’s Institution. We have more work to do on this. I pointed out two or three institutions and we heard Senator Gavan talk about the one in Westmeath.

I cannot quite get the rationale of why this is being introduced at this stage. I will only say “perceived” because I do not know enough about it, but it has been perceived as if this is in some way closing the thing down or narrowing the focus. I would definitely ask the Minister to follow up on St. Kevin's. I will undertake to engage with a number of people tomorrow who have hard facts on it. However, there is no question that it did not cease to have women held there against their will to give birth to children - these were married people in the State - and, then, for their children to be taken from them with the knowledge of the authorities and transferred out to institutions, in many cases for many years. Their legal parents could not access them. We know that, subsequently, some of these parents turned up and facilitated the baptism of their children. Moreover, they held the same name as both of their parents because they were married, and they had their name but they stayed in care.

We know some of these families have already benefited from previous redress so they would be precluded from redress anyway. Some of these were families of five, six and seven children from one set of parents who were legally married. Of course, as I said earlier and as the Minister knows well, we had no divorce or legal separation at that point. There is no question of the connection between the name, the baptismal certificates and these people. Some of the parents are still alive today. Some of these people are in their 50s, 60s and 70s. They are alive to tell the story. There is a lot of documentation on where they were refused access, where the Garda was called and where the children were told their father was not a fit man to have access to them or to take them out. There was no such thing as supervision.

It is complex and while I appreciate that everyone here knows that, we are definitely wrong in regard to St. Kevin's.