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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 10 Jun 2014

Vol. 843 No. 4

Mother and Baby Homes: Statements

I welcome the opportunity given by the House for statements on mother and baby homes in the Dáil tonight and I thank my colleagues on all sides of the House for facilitating these statements. I would like to begin by acknowledging the Irish women who were in mother and baby homes in this country in the last century and the children that they bore while in those institutions. Their personal stories are harrowing. The legacy of past cruelties continues to make itself felt. Indeed in recent days in the media, we have heard from women who spent time in mother and baby homes and from some of the children who came into the world in those institutions. Many of those affected want their stories told. Others may wish to have privacy and we must be respectful of that choice.

I am appealing to those within and outside Leinster House to be sensitive in their choice of language when referring to these matters. Thanks to the patient research of Catherine Corless, we know that 796 children died in the mother and baby home run by the Sisters of Bon Secours in Tuam during the period from 1925 to 1961.

Each one of those 796 children was an individual, a citizen, a son or daughter. The matters under consideration concern real people and I appeal for this fact to be borne in mind. We are dealing with personal histories in this regard and it is not the time for sensationalism.

Equally, insensitive language has been used in the rush to cast blame. Undoubtedly, many individuals are culpable for the cruelties of the past but I want to acknowledge the reality that Irish society as a whole colluded in maintaining the regime of mother and baby homes. If we are to face up the truth of our past as a nation, and I strongly believe that we must, then we must resist temptation to simplify our history.

The revelations about the Tuam mother and baby home, in particular in the context of the questions raised over the way in which burials were conducted and the high rates of child and infant mortality, brought to public attention a dark aspect of our history in terms of how single mothers were treated in the not too distant past. Members on all sides of the House and the wider public were absolutely appalled by the reports emanating from Tuam. It was immediately apparent, however, that the Tuam home could not be considered in isolation. Over the past few days, there has been a growing appreciation of the complexity of the matters that fall to be examined. Infant mortality and burial arrangements are but two aspects of the difficult range of matters to be considered in the context of mother and baby homes. I would like the commission of investigation to consider matters beyond child and infant mortality and burial. Questions remain unanswered about the nature of adoptions and vaccine trials. Significant legal difficulties have been identified in seeking answers to these questions in the past and it is my intention that the commission of investigation can make progress where past investigations have failed.

It is my considered view that we owe it to the women who were in mother and baby homes and the children born to them in those institutions to take a reasoned, professional approach to ensure we move with a sense of urgency without failing to appreciate the breadth of issues that need to be considered in the context of the forthcoming investigation. That is why, as an initial step, I established a group comprising senior officials across a range of Departments to gather information and report to Cabinet on the means by which this complex, disturbing and tragic situation can be best addressed. Having received a preliminary update from the group, the Cabinet agreed earlier to establish a commission of investigation with statutory powers to investigate mother and baby homes. The work of the interdepartmental group will continue no later than 30 June and its completed work will inform the Government's decisions on the terms of reference and composition of the commission. The interdepartmental group will complete its work before the end of the month. A huge volume of records, data and information exists and the group is endeavouring to identify where that information is stored. Along with the eight key Departments involved, the National Archives is represented on the group, as is the Office of Public Works. To date, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop Neary, Bishop Buckley of Cork and Archbishop Michael Jackson have all expressed support for an investigation into mother and baby homes. I very much welcome the support expressed and I call on all church leaders to fully co-operate and to lend their unqualified practical support to the commission of inquiry.

Excellent work has been carried out by a number of historians to get to the truth of the history of mother and baby homes in our State. I commend Ms Catherine Corless, in particular, for her patient work in researching the Tuam home. She has been an eloquent advocate for the children who died there over a 40-year period.

Today's Government decision to establish a commission of investigation underlines the seriousness of our approach to these matters. Since coming into power, the Government has shown its willingness to confront and shine a light into the dark aspects of our recent social history. A commission of investigation offers a reasonably efficient approach to matters of urgent public concern. Under the Commission of Investigations Act 2004, a commission has the power to conduct its investigation in any manner it considers appropriate within the parameters of the legislation. It must seek and facilitate the voluntary co-operation of people whose evidence it requires. It is entitled to compel witnesses to give evidence and it can direct a person to provide it with any documents in the person's possession or power relating to the matter under investigation. If a person fails to comply, the commission can apply to the court to compel compliance or it may impose a costs order against the individual for the costs incurred by all other parties arising from the delay.

It is also of significance that the approval of the order establishing a commission must be approved by both Houses of the Oireachtas and, in this context, I welcome the support of colleagues on all sides in regard to the Government's commitment to investigate matters relating to mother and baby homes. I thank members of the Opposition who responded positively to my invitation to meet today in respect of these matters.

The terms of reference of the commission of investigation have yet to be established but work is under way in that regard. I would welcome further engagement on all sides of the House in progressing these matters. I very much welcome the growing national consensus in politics, in the churches and among the public that it is essential that we as a people do not shy away from our past. As well as implementing transparency in governance as we move forward, we must seek to bring transparency and openness to the actions of the past. I believe today's Government agreement to establish a commission of investigation presents an historic opportunity for our country to take a united approach in our commitment to dealing with one of the most tragic and traumatic chapters in modern Irish history.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute on this important issue. I would like to acknowledge the hard and persistent work of Ms Catherine Corless, who was determined to get to the bottom of the facts by accessing archived materials in order that the mothers and babies of Tuam could be remembered correctly. Considerable work has also been done by historians in colleges across the country on the history of mother and baby homes not only in Ireland but across Europe. None of this work should be ignored.

This is a sensitive and complex issue and should be discussed in a calm and considered manner. Some of the sensationalist coverage over the past ten days has not helped the people affected by mother and baby homes. It is not for the first time, unfortunately, that we, as Oireachtas Members, and society in general find ourselves discussing the need to investigate an extremely dark period in the history of our State. Recent coverage has reminded us how religious institutions, the State, families and society in general grossly failed these women and their babies since the foundation of the State. Single women who became pregnant were shunned, shamed and stigmatised. It is a fact that society treated them appallingly and the State facilitated this treatment by providing the mother and baby homes. There were homes for "first offenders" - women who were pregnant for the first time. Their babies, if they were lucky enough to survive, were taken from them forcefully or otherwise put up for adoption in Ireland or, worse still, abroad in the UK and the US.

People will be familiar with the film "Philomena", which outlines one person's story of her experience in Roscrea. By the time Philomena Lee secured access to her son's records, he had died and, therefore, she never met him. Ironically, she is one of the lucky ones, as many thousands of mothers still have no access to records of where their daughters or sons are.

Media reports last week that up to 796 babies may have died at the Tuam mother and baby home and been buried in a mass grave reignited a public debate into how mother and baby homes throughout the country were run. We have also read reports published by advocacy groups such as Adoption Rights Now, which highlighted the gross, barbaric and inhumane treatment of women and their children in these institutions. Heavily pregnant women carried out manual labour such as sowing potatoes, and scrubbing concrete floors on their hands and knees with a toothbrush. We learned how women were denied painkillers during birth, as this was seen as a way to atone for giving birth outside marriage, and how babies with disabilities were neglected.

Books have been written and last night RTE reran a documentary that was first aired in 2011 dealing with how innocent babies were used for vaccine trials and, indeed, how in the period 1940-65, 401 infant bodies were used for dissection in the interests of medical research.

Unfortunately, this news is not new. While independent investigation is necessary to establish the true facts of what happened over many decades one thing is patently clear - we as a State failed in our duty to protect these women who only got pregnant but were treated as outcasts by society. I believe the Taoiseach should offer a full apology on behalf of the State.

This is a very complex and multi-layered issue. There has been little debate on the role of the fathers. They were treated very differently by society at the time. There was no requirement in law to put the father's name on the birth certificate. This was totally unfair on the women and the babies. No doubt there are some fathers tonight wondering whether their sons and daughters are alive. The truth is that this was just as much a societal issue of the time.

International media reports over the past week have once again put Ireland in the spotlight for wrong reasons. The eyes of the world are now on Ireland, and how we as a society will deal with this issue will indicate how we should be judged internationally. I initially called for a full independent investigation to ensure that the full facts could be gathered and the truth of how these homes were run would be made known. We owe it to the women and it is the very least they deserve. I welcome the establishment of the independent inquiry but I note that the Government intends to complete the scoping exercise that was commenced last week by the cross-departmental group set up by the Minister, Deputy Charles Flanagan. This is expected to be completed by the end of June, after which there will be discussions on the scope, format and terms of reference of the commission of investigation.

We must establish the truth based on the facts. The last thing the women need or deserve is the sensationalising of what they have already lived through at the hands of their families, society, the State and religious institutions. These women have been wronged and they must have full confidence that if they wish to come forward, they can be assured of compassion, sensitivity and confidentiality and that nobody will be judging them. All of this coverage is undoubtedly reigniting feelings which may have been suppressed. I ask that a helpline be set up for persons who have queries. Counselling services should also be made available to those who require them.

I welcome the cross-party approach of the Minister. This is, after all, above party politics. I welcome that Archbishop Martin and other bishops have come forward in support of this investigation and I hope all the religious will support it. The investigation must examine all elements of what took place in these institutions and how we as a society allowed it to take place. The following issues must be examined: the unexplained high mortality rates, which were 40% to 50% higher inside these homes than among the general population; the appalling treatment of women and children which I mentioned earlier; the burial practices - in my constituency of Westmeath there are between 300 and 500 bodies buried at the home in Castlepollard but we cannot even identify the precise number of babies buried there; how children were used as guinea pigs in the trials of vaccines; how infant bodies were dissected for medical research; how babies were taken from their mothers so they could be illegally and forcibly adopted.

While we cannot rewrite history, this investigation, if properly framed with the right terms of reference, will have the opportunity to ensure we have an independent, transparent and factual record of what happened at these homes. I welcome the Minister's commitment again this evening that there will be future engagement with the Opposition and with interested groups. We must ensure that appropriate records are maintained for all time into the future and that all records will be sorted in chronological order, digitised and made available to persons who came through these homes and wish to find their identity. There are approximately 45,000 people who are unable to find their true identity. Only last month I met a mother and son and even though both parties consented to their records being made available, those records could not be made available. The availability of records would be something positive to emerge from a very shameful period of our past.

I look forward to working with the Minister in a constructive manner to ensure this sorry saga is brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

I am sharing time with Deputy McDonald.

I welcome the Government's announcement earlier today and we await the full details on the terms of reference of the statutory commission of investigation announced by the Minister and discussed in the House this afternoon by the Taoiseach. It is a dreadful fact that women and children placed by the State under the so-called care of religious orders and other church institutions in this country between the 1920s and 1970s were treated as outcasts and non-people. We have also been exposed to the dreadful fact that these institutions were effectively places of imprisonment for pregnant women, with many facing the loss of their child through forced adoptions, including the sale of babies by these religious orders, particularly to wealthy Irish-American families. However, the latest revelations from Tuam have highlighted more horrifying aspects of the regimes in these mother and baby homes and they demand immediate action to uncover the full truth. Foremost in our thoughts should be the surviving mothers who endured what was, in reality, their incarceration in these institutions and the surviving adopted children who wish to find out the truth about the identity of their parents, siblings and wider families, if they have any.

Great credit is due to an ordinary Irish citizen, Catherine Corless, who painstakingly researched the Bon Secours mother and baby home in her native town of Tuam, County Galway. She has pursued this for the past number of years and in 2013 her research revealed the scale of children's deaths and burials at the home. Between 1925 and 1961, 796 children died in the Bon Secours mother and baby home. Their names are recorded and were accessed by Catherine Corless in the births and deaths registry in Galway. What has brought this story to national and international attention is the manner of the children's burial - anonymously, without any type of individual identification or markers and apparently in a mass grave. It has caused widespread revulsion and has re-opened and highlighted anew the scandal of mother and baby homes in this State.

We know from the research so far that 796 children died in Tuam between 1925 and 1961. In 1933, of 120 admissions to Tuam, 42 babies died. That is a shocking 35% mortality rate. The rate in Bessborough was 39%, in Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea it was 37.5% and in Pelletstown in Dublin it was 34%.

At one stage, the death rate at Bessborough reached 61%. Between 1922 and 1949, 219 children died in the Protestant-run Bethany Home in Dublin. Of these, 175 were aged between four weeks and two years. A further 25 were aged from a number of hours up to four weeks and 19 were stillborn. Cemetery records indicate that the causes of death included 54 from convulsions, 41 from heart failure, 26 from starvation and seven from pneumonia. These are shocking facts and I have no doubt that the commission of inquiry to be established will bring forward even more shocking facts. As a people, we must face up to that. We must face up to the wrongs of the past and the reasons these dreadful things happened.

I conclude my contribution to these statements, which will be followed shortly by the substantive debate that will focus on the key arguments for action incorporated in Sinn Féin's Private Members' motion, by adding my voice to the Minister's appeal to all who have relevant information, documentation or memories of these dreadful years in these institutions that would assist the commission of inquiry in the carrying out of its remit to co-operate fully, come forward and share what they have and what they know. I emphasise that this must be a process that will definitively address the terrible years, experiences and great wrongs that have been done to all the women and children who have suffered so much in these dreadful places.

A number of weeks ago during April, we gathered in Mount Jerome Cemetery to unveil a memorial stone to the 219 children who had died in the Bethany Home in Rathgar. The level of distress experienced by survivors and their families at that gathering was something to behold. At that stage, the Government and the State had adopted the position that there would be no dealing with mother and baby homes and what had occurred in them. I welcome very much the fact that the position has changed. I recognise that it has changed largely because of the widespread outcry in respect of the revelations regarding the Tuam mother and baby home and the mass burial site there. That reaction of horror is entirely understandable. The reaction of shock and even disbelief is entirely understandable. However, it is important to state that this information is not entirely new. It may be new to vast sections of the general public but it is not new information to the State or its agencies.

Religious institutions and organisations and the churches undoubtedly have a case to answer in respect of the mother and baby homes and other relevant institutions. Undoubtedly, the social norms of Ireland in past decades must be scrutinised and collectively we have questions to answer. However, when one pares it all back, this is really about the State's responsibility to each and every citizen, to those women who found themselves in those institutions and to those children who were born and in some cases died in them. Many of the children were fostered out or adopted from them. We rely in the final instance on the State to be a bulwark against warped social values or perverse practices within any privately run institution. The Minister, Deputy Flanagan, must bear in mind that the State had an obligation to regulate and inspect these very institutions in which we now know such cruel abuse occurred.

Speaking earlier today, the Taoiseach said the inquiry is all about the kind of Ireland that was. He has a point. However, it is equally important to state that the manner of the investigation will tell us everything about the kind of Ireland we live in now and the value we place on women and children. I welcome the fact that the commission of investigation will have full statutory powers to compel witnesses and papers. I presume those powers will extend to access to potential burial sites, some of which are in private hands. I understand the full scope of the inquiry must be thought out and itemised precisely. The central issues around the care regime or lack thereof, the infant and child mortality rates, the vaccination trials and the practices around adoption are clear issues to be addressed. There are some more.

I understand that the scope of the inquiry equally needs to be clarified. Just as the mother and baby homes need to be examined, so too do other institutions that were in part or in whole State funded and State regulated. They should be included in the mix. I refer for instance to the Westbank home in Greystones which only closed in 1998. That had a very clear relationship with Bethany Home in Rathgar. I refer to the Protestant Magdalen homes which have never been subjected to any public scrutiny or examination and have been excluded from any form of inquiry or redress. I refer again to the Magdalen laundries because there was huge interplay between the Magdalen laundries and the mother and baby homes. One cannot carry out anything that pretends to be a comprehensive and objective examination of those institutions without returning to the issues in the Magdalen laundries. The McAleese process was imperfect to say the least. We must now compensate for that fact in the course of this commission of investigation.

We have a chance now to get it right and there is an expectation on the part of survivors, their families and the broader society that we will do so. I urge the Minister to work with the Opposition benches here and, more importantly, to have a listening ear to all of those campaigning groups across the country who for many years have been telling their stories. They learned today that perhaps they will be fully heard and vindicated. I hope that nobody here in the Dáil will disappoint them.

I wish to share time with Deputies Daly and Coppinger.

I welcome the Government's decision to establish a statutory commission of investigation into mother and baby homes. Such an inquiry is long overdue. That hundreds of children are buried in unmarked graves is not news. The fact of how mothers and babies were treated is not new. I wonder how the public who have known about it for so long feel about the politicians' wringing of hands now.

The Taoiseach told us that this was Ireland of the 1920s and 1960s, but I have a story from the 1980s, when the Taoiseach was already a Member of the Dáil. When my sister Mary was 19 she got pregnant. She went to a social worker here in Dublin and told her she was considering adoption as she was struggling with the idea of raising the child. She was put in contact by the social worker with CURA, a Catholic agency. After seven months, she decided she did not want to part with the child and would keep it. She returned to the social worker and told her. The social worker told her she was mad, ignorant and was putting the baby at risk. She was made cry before she left the room. She had her baby in Holles Street and five hours later there was a nun at the bedside with a form and a pen, pressuring her into signing. My sister did not give in. If she had, she might never have seen her daughter again. That was not the 1960s, it was the 1980s.

How do we treat our most vulnerable today?

Are we proud of how we treat the 4,000 people in direct provision? Are we proud of how we export 4,000 young women each year to terminate pregnancies abroad? Are we proud of how we treated single mothers, those who find the strength to raise their children alone? In April 2012, the Minister for Social Protection announced that she would not proceed with changes to the one-parent family payment unless a credible and bankable commitment to a Scandinavian-style child care system had been put in place. There was no new child care system but the reforms went ahead. Are we proud of how we treat our Traveller children? Some of them are now on the PULSE system while still infants. Have we treated them any better than the Aborigines were treated in Australia? Have we treated them any better than the American Indian was treated in North America?

Last week, the Minister for Health was quoted as saying: "This is a nation that stands on its own two feet and we will protect our children". The new Minister for Children and Youth Affairs feigned shock at the Tuam story, telling the media that it happened at a time when our children were not cherished as they should have been. This is not news. We have known about this. We play games and perform for the public. They are shocked because some of them have never heard it before, so we are shocked, but we are not shocked really because we knew about it. How much has changed? To what extent do we treat our children differently today compared with then?

There is no doubt this is an incredibly painful discussion for many people. The horrors of Tuam have opened up wounds. All Members received correspondence from the American wife of a man forcibly adopted from an institution in Ireland to America. He has been searching for his mother for a lifetime. A man in Galway talked about bringing his grandmother to a field where the bodies of her dead twins were buried in a shoebox because an infant who died at birth could not be buried in consecrated ground. This has brought many scars to the surface. I am torn between two reactions. On one hand, I have an almighty sense of relief on behalf of the campaigners for adoption rights in the Adoption Rights Alliance, who crusaded in the wilderness for years and tried to get a hearing on these issues. I welcome that the crimes done to women and children in these institutions are being recognised as crimes. People have campaigned for it for a long time. On the other hand, I find it nauseating to see the hand-wringing of the Taoiseach and hear the talk of shock over the past few weeks. The only shock is that it has taken our society so long to address it. A full report was submitted to the Department last year by the survivors of Sean Ross Abbey, which documented some of the horrors now in the public domain. Hundreds of children were buried there, unmarked and unrecognised. From visits to Tuam made by the health service in the 1940s, we know that it talked about children who were potbellied, fragile, emaciated and with high mortality rates. The State knew about these issues.

In 2002, Brian Lenihan introduced a report by the Department of Health looking at records in institutions. The records are of full archive standard and deal in many instances with mother and baby homes. There was information showing that the Legion of Mary had sought State funding while there were high levels of infant mortality in some of the institutions it dealt with. The information is not new and we can feign shock all we like. There is no doubt the public is genuinely shocked, but what happens next will be decisive. No woman ever left a mother and baby home with a baby. The baby either died in poor circumstances or was given up for adoption, illegally in most instances. It was forced from the woman without the appropriate documentation or support. The issue of survivors and their access to adoption records has now come centre stage.

The Minister will be judged on how the commission of inquiry conducts itself. I am glad that we have one, but it should be conducted outside the State and be fully independent, because we all know the State was responsible for funding many of these organisations and was very happy to allow the Catholic Church to take our young women, hide them behind grey walls, exploit them and discard them and their children to save society the bother of having to deal with them. It must be addressed. The Magdalen issue also needs to be addressed, because the mother and baby homes were a tunnel through which people ended up in Magdalen homes. A full apology, in the style of the apology by the Australian Government, is necessary. I welcome that this is out in the public domain and I hope the inquiry will be genuinely independent. It is what people need.

Deputy Ruth M. Coppinger

I would like to divide my time between the past and the present in respect of how mothers and babies are treated. I fully support a full investigation, which must deal with all of the homes, with all records handed over. Major issues are at stake and I wonder whether the Government and the Fianna Fáil benches will take some time to think about these issues. How did it happen that women and children born outside wedlock were treated so badly and, effectively, tortured? How did such a weak and poverty-ridden State lean on the Catholic Church for support and legitimacy, and how come it tied the morals of the church into the State and the Constitution, with the resultant horror for women and children? Then, as now, the State was made up of the same political parties, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party, that have alternated power for the past number of years. The State, not just the church, is equally culpable. The State was responsible for these women and children.

The Taoiseach said it was an abomination that women were treated like that in what he termed the old days. I ask the Minister to turn his attention to lone parents and children today. Who is most affected by the hammer blow of austerity dealt by this Government and the previous Government? The answer is lone parents. No other group in society is more likely, or guaranteed, to live in poverty than that group. Who is most affected by the decision of this Government and the previous Government not to build council housing? Mothers and babies, particularly single parents, are directly affected by the State's neglect in privatising the housing system. Today, mothers and babies are not shunned and hidden away, but I put it to the Minister that the current epidemic of homelessness is making victims of mothers and babies, particularly single mothers and their babies, which is resulting in serious mental and physical health problems for the women and their children. They are being affected by cuts in child benefit, rent allowance and a host of supports that allow them to make a life for themselves and for their families. I ask the Minister to note that the State is continuing to privatise the care of all vulnerable groups in society and in many cases, to private religious denominations. Will that be investigated by the commission?

The crime and shame of direct provision for asylum seekers has also been mentioned. This effectively guarantees that people live in a nightmare of torture.

I also point out to the Minister that it was not so long ago that the ranks of the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil backbenches revolted over the idea of allowing women autonomy over their own bodies when pregnant. That did not happen a million years ago; it was very recent. The right to life does not end at birth. I hope that is noted by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and those who denied women that autonomy in legislation arising from the X case.

I thank the Members who spoke and I welcome the unity of voice and purpose that exists in the House in respect of a shared desire to shine a light on what we have described as a dark chapter of our modern Irish history.

I thank the Members of the Opposition who responded positively to my invitation to meet me to discuss these matters today and I give a commitment that this approach will continue in the future, until such time as the commission of inquiry is established and authorised to commence its independent body of work.

We will have a longer debate this evening during Private Members' time on matters related to mother and baby homes. These are matters of some complexity and of great sensitivity, but we will not shy away from our responsibilities in this regard. We must face up to our past, but we must do so in a considered way. I intend to ensure that the interdepartmental group completes its work on schedule, before the end of June, so that we can progress the establishment of the commission of investigation. I look forward to continued engagement with colleagues from all sides of the House in this regard. I repeat my call to church leaders and churches to co-operate fully with the investigation that will take place shortly. The women who spent time in mother and baby homes and the children born to them will be to the forefront of our minds as we progress this issue with firm resolve and unity of purpose.

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