Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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160. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if the planned legislation to preserve privately held records relating to Ireland’s institutional past will include financial records so that important information about money made from forced labour or the fees demanded from families of unjustly incarcerated women and children, or the forced export of children, is retained and available; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43452/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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This proposed legislation, which I am bringing forward as Committee Stage Amendments to the Maternity Protection Bill, provides for the preservation of defined categories of records held by private actors, so that they are preserved in the public interest. 

The private actors would include anyone who holds records relating to Mother and Baby and County Home Institutions, Magdalen laundries, industrial schools and reformatories, and orphanages, as well as the bodies who ran or oversaw these institutions. It also includes records relating to those who were involved in placing people for adoption, into a care arrangement, into an institution, or with the persons who assumed the role of parents to them, in the case of illegal birth registration. 

It would place an obligation on any private holder of a relevant record to preserve it, making it an offence to destroy, mutilate, falsify, or fail to maintain relevant records, or to export them from the State. 

The term “relevant record” is used to describe the records covered by the legislation.  It is a broad definition that comprises records relating to these private bodies at any period up to 31 December 1998. This includes, but is not limited to, records relating to: the establishment and management of an institution or relevant body; its finances, accounts and commercial activities; its administration, regulatory compliance activities and governance matters; and periodical accounts of activities, including “house annals”. 

This will support people in gaining further information on the institutional systems which shaped their life experiences in such significant ways and will also help society as a whole to gain a deeper understanding of these systems, which existed in our country for so long.