Inquiry’s scope could go as far back as 1920s
The Government will take the next two weeks to consider what precisely an investigation should look into and has promised to publish details before the Dáil breaks for summer holidays on July 17.
An interdepartmental review on the issue was discussed by Cabinet yesterday. It is expected that its scope could range from the 1920s until 1987, when laws abolishing the status of “illegitimate child” and giving rights to unmarried parents were introduced.
Children’s Minister Charlie Flanagan said people are still “living with the daily reality of these painful experiences” and his primary concern was to set up an inquiry which would address all the issues in a “sensitive and timely” way.
A range of issues are being considered in drawing up the terms of reference, including: What constitutes a mother-and-baby home; how they were run; the circumstances of mothers who entered them; the high mortality rates of children in them; burial arrangements for those babies; their use in clinical trials; and domestic and international adoptions.
Mr Flanagan has received more than 100 submissions ahead of the inquiry, and met with groups including the Adoptions Rights Alliance, First Mothers Group, Bethany Homes Survivors Group, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
Calls to include the Magdalene laundries in the inquiry will be given consideration, he said, but pointed out that women in these homes have already received a State apology and compensation following the McAleese report.
He said there was “a valid question as to how inclusion of the Magdalene laundries within the terms of reference of another inquiry would be in the interest of or be of benefit to the women in question”.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the commission of inquiry would be “another step” in dealing with a “sad element” of the legacy of “the domination of the people and society by the Church”.
He said the investigation will be “part of a national conversation about Ireland as a society, about its people and about what happened here”.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams called for the inquiry to be given “as wide a remit as possible” so that “the broader question of the State’s attitude to women may be examined”.
Socialist TD Joe Higgins said it would be impossible to examine what happened in mother-and-baby homes without examining the relationship between the Church and State.
“A very weak capitalist State dominated by gombeens, small business owners, right-wing politicians, and so on, desperately in search of security and legitimacy, leaned on the authority of the Catholic Church for that legitimacy and ceded considerable powers that should have been democratically controlled by a democratic state to a Church institution,” said Mr Higgins.
