Institutional Burials (Amendment) Bill 2022: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-25 ============================================================ Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin I begin my contribution on this Bill by recognising the ongoing work at Tuam, the careful, painstaking, deeply sensitive work that is unfolding there. It is difficult but necessary work which asks something of us all. A Zora Neale Hurston quote came to mind this week for me, "There are years that ask questions and years that answer". Survivors, family members and society more broadly have asked their questions and it is beyond time for us to fully answer them. How does a country that is still living its history, not studying it from a distance, find the courage to face what lies beneath its soil and within its people? How do we continue to hold the gravity and depravity of what happened in this country, not as something abstract but as something that has shaped real lives? It is with this in mind that we table this Bill today. It is a response to the gaps that we know exist within the Institutional Burials Act and seeks to recognise the undignified burials of thousands of children on institutional lands in Ireland. Some 9,000 children are known to have died in mother and baby homes and county homes between 1922 and 1988. The infant mortality rates in these homes were double the national rate, highlighting the extent of the abuse and neglect that occurred there. A total of 1,090 infants died at Sean Ross Abbey but burial records exist for only 259 of them. At Bessborough in Cork, where the infant mortality rate was as high as 75% in the early 1940s, 923 infants died, with burials documented in just 64 cases. This discrepancy between death and burial records is itself a cause for concern and given what we know about the extent of the undignified burials that took place at Tuam, it is not speculative to suggest that manifestly inappropriate burials likely took place on other institutional lands at an equivalent scale. After all, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have thought a lot about social memory lately and what it means in the absence of identification, examination and memorialisation of those who are buried on institutional lands. I am reminded that I have always believed that memory lives within us, not only in our constructed memories of events but in collective memory, something that links our past, present and future selves together, telling us who we are. I once read of memory as a series of storehouses and when I think of the thousands of people across Ireland who carry their own private storehouses of memory and I think of the literal storehouses under the ground in places like Tuam, Bessborough, Sean Ross Abbey and others, I cannot help but see the painful symmetry between what is buried beneath the soil and what is buried beneath the living. Storehouses within storehouses within storehouses, and within those storehouses lies a truth and that truth exists whether we acknowledge or deny it. It calls on us as a society to make it present, not only as a private grief but as a shared memory. It calls on us to create spaces where truth can be received with care, where the past can be inherited with justice and where dignity can be restored. What was taken in death can be recognised in memory but this is not simply about memory. It is about rights, obligations and what sort of State we choose to be. A human rights framework demands that we understand burial sites not as historical curiosities nor as administrative matters to be managed but as physical manifestations of violations of fundamental rights, where individuals died in circumstances of abuse, neglect, abandonment or enforced disappearance. The State's responsibility did not end with their deaths. It did not end at the moment of burial. It continues through the duties of investigating, identifying, preserving, acknowledging, memorialising and providing redress. When burial locations remain unknown, when records are destroyed or incomplete and when graves are unmarked or concealed, the violation does not rest quietly in the past – it persists. Families are left without certainty. They are left without a place to stand in their grief and without a site to mark or a place to lay their prayer. The right to truth and to know what happened, where a loved one lies and how they were treated is not merely symbolic; it is inalienable. It applies not only to the families but to society as a whole. Excavation must be approached with great sensitivity and care. That is why in our Bill we did not place a mandate on the State to intervene. The preference for the majority of families will likely be to know with greater certainty the final resting place of their loved ones. We can achieve this without full excavation and we argue the State should work proactively to provide this. This is especially urgent on lands where development is planned. Human dignity does not end at death. International standards are clear. The dead must be treated with respect, graves must be protected and preserved and burials must be individual where possible. Remains must not be desecrated or disregarded. Dignified burial is not an optional gesture of compassion; it is part of fair and equal treatment in death. It is part of restoring honour where it was denied. It is part of ensuring no one is left behind, not in life and not in death. The State carries an obligation to investigate suspicious or unlawful deaths, which includes searching for and identifying remains where possible and when warranted. Where burial records are missing, where remains may have been uncoffined and where burial practices may have been inappropriate, further forensic examination is a fulfilment of duty. Delay in action and hesitation prolong suffering and undermine the right to an effective remedy. They allow uncertainty to cement into injustice or for cement to be laid over burial grounds due to legislative gaps and for them to remain unnamed and unmarked. A rights-based approach is not about legal duties but about participation. It requires that families and affected communities are not onlookers to decisions made about their own histories. They must be consulted and informed. They must be heard. Decisions about investigation, excavation, preservation and memorialisation must reflect the voices of those most directly impacted. In doing so we honour not only the dead but the living who carry them in memory. Memorialisation is not an afterthought; it is part of the process of reparation. It is part of a guarantee that what happened will not be erased from memory, distorted or repeated. When we preserve burial sites, mark them in a dignified manner and provide spaces for remembrance, we do more than mourn. We make accountability visible. We allow society to confront itself honestly, openly and with full, radical acceptance of its darkest parts and the darkest parts of us. Taken together, the human rights framework makes something very clear: the location of remains, the provision of dignified burial, preservation and memorialisation are not optional policy choices but legal and moral obligations. They are actions grounded in dignity, truth, equality and participation in justice, and in preventing reoccurrence. This is not only about what lies beneath the soil but about what lives within us as a people. It is about whether we are prepared to make space politically, legally and socially for truth to stand in open air. It is about whether we are finally willing to inherit our past with care, courage and the justice it demands. --- 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/seanad/2026-02-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-25