Government Cannot Be Allowed To Bury The Dirty Secrets Of The Mother And Baby Homes
Despite government claims to the contrary, the Commission of Investigation (Mother and Baby Homes and certain related matters) Records, and another Matter, Bill was designed to bury the dirty secrets of the state and the so-called mother and baby homes for the next thirty years.
And had it not been for the vocal opposition of the survivors of those ‘homes’ and their families, Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and their Green Party mudguard may have succeeded in their plan.
As opposition to the legislation mounted in the run up to Thursday’s vote, the Green Party’s Roderic O’Gorman (the minister responsible for the bill) insisted that he was acting on the legal advice of the Attorney General. Hiding behind the unpublished legal advice of the Attorney General has long been the default position of ministers trying to justify the unjustifiable.
Are we to believe that the government was following the advice of the Attorney General when it decided to allocate just minutes for the debate on the legislation?
Did the Attorney General impose a blanket ban on opposition amendments to the bill?
Was it the Attorney General who refused to consider any other mechanism to avert the allegedly imminent destruction of important documentation relating to the mother and baby homes?
The Green Party’s Roderic O’Gorman hid behind the unpublished advice of the Attorney General
Of course the Attorney General had no input into these decisions, because they were explicitly political, not legal, decisions. These decisions say more about the government’s true intentions than any amount of rhetoric from Roderic.
Following the adoption of the legislation, various ministers, backbench TDs and other apologists for the government changed tack. Now it was their own ‘messaging’ and ‘communication’ that was at fault.
Those who were opposed to the legislation simply didn’t understand it. The simple, ignorant, well-meaning folk were getting all worked up over nothing. A textbook case of political gaslighting if ever there was one.
In reality, those who oppose the legislation know exactly what it entails. They understand that the personal testimonies that 500 survivors gave to The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation and the written administrative records from at least 18 homes are now set to be sealed for the next three decades.
They also know that government assurances that they will introduce additional legislation to give survivors (and possibly their families) access to their own testimonies and records are just empty words from a political class that have failed those same survivors since the day they were born.
Éirígí For A New Republic stands with the survivors and with their families. The inter-generational hurt caused by the barbaric system of mother and child homes can never be undone. Offering the survivors access to the truth is the least the government and the state can do.
The survivors are morally entitled to access their own testimonies and official records. The government must now act to also give them legal entitlement to those documents.