Survivors of the mother and baby homes have reacted with anger to the government's approval of a controversial bill affecting records for the former facilities
Members of the Dáil approved the Bill last night amid concerns that survivors will have difficulties accessing the 60,000 records created during a five year State investigation into the homes.
Children's Minister Roderick O'Gorman said the aim was to preserve the work of the commission to aid in the tracing of relatives.
Joan explained how her son was taken from her while she was breastfeeding. "Because in those days because it was immoral to show your breast, you were facing the wall in this room with your back to the door. And I now realise why you were facing to the wall; she [a nun] crept in, she bent over and picked the baby up and ran like a bat out of hell down the corridor."
Joan added: "I never saw him again for 46 years."
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Waterford Green Party TD Marc O’Cathasaigh came on the programme to explain his vote in favour of the bill, against strong opposition from other parties and Independents, including Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit. He criticised how the government has handled the bill but said the government had to act to protect the information.
“I am angry on behalf of the people who were so badly treated in the mother and baby homes, and I am angry…with my own government that we did not communicate to these hurt and traumatised people properly to tell them what the intention of this bill was.”
Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman has apologised for his failure “to properly communicate” what the Government is going to do with the report into the homes which is due to be published next week.
“I deeply regret my failure to communicate which caused anxiety,” he told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
The Minister said that when his department saw the value of the information included in the database, he wanted to ensure it was taken out of the archive and given to Tusla to help with their existing tracing processes, saying the aim was to preserve the work of the Commission to aid in the tracing of relatives.
Mr O’Gorman explained that the Commission of investigation into Mother and Baby Homes had worked on the basis of the 2004 Act, meaning records will be sealed for the next 30 year, which he described as “very problematic”.
However, Dr Maeve O’Rourke, lecturer in human rights at Maynooth University, says many survivors of the homes just don’t have faith in Tusla to handle the records.
“(They) are saying that they feel discriminated against, patronised and infantilised by the practices that Tusla operates in relation to adoption information.
“They have publicly stated that they consider that they need the consent of a third-party to disclose an adopted person’s first name and date of birth, they consider that is third-party information.”
The Bill will now go back to the Seanad for consideration after the Government refused to accept any Opposition amendments.
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