Mother and Baby Homes Inquiries
Dail Éireann — 2022-10-13
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Bríd Smith (PBP), Dublin South-Central

I have just 30 seconds to ask the Minister an important question. His decision not to engage an international expert to review the report on mother and baby homes has been met with widespread anger across that community. Will he make a comment on the fact that this report will remain the official report of the State, despite its outrageous conclusion and misleading slant on the testimonies given? I am sure the Minister will probably have to give me a written answer but the issue is very important and it is creating widespread anger in that community.

Roderic O'Gorman (GP), Dublin West

I always recognise the importance of the testimonies of those who appear before the confidential committee. That is why I went to some length to secure the audio recordings of those who did so when those testimonies were believed to be lost or deleted. I know many of the witnesses describe their personal experiences to the confidential committee and they did so feeling that their words would form part of the historical record. That did not happen. Their testimonies were abbreviated, truncated and, sometimes, combined. I will seek to address that in the initiative I am bringing forward either to allow the recordings from the confidential committee or to allow survivors to come forward to give a new account and testimony of their time in these institutions but also to allow survivors who did not appear before the confidential committee ensure that their words form part of the historical record and a key element of the records of the memorial centre that the Government will also bring forward.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-10-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:10+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-10-13