President: Meeting survivors' needs must be 'at the heart' of response to baby homes report

President Michael D  Higgins said the Commission of Investigation’s report reminds us of how "far short Ireland fell" from fulfilling the promise of our Republic. Picture: MAXWELLS

Meeting the needs and concerns of survivors must be "at the heart of the response" to the mother and baby homes report, the president has said.

Michael D Higgins has said the Commission of Investigation’s report, published this week, reminds us of how "far short Ireland fell" from fulfilling the promise of our Republic, and of how "the violation of fundamental rights of our fellow citizens was condoned over an extended period of time".

He said State and Church bear a heavy responsibility for this.

There is now a responsibility to move without delay to the next phase of this process

President Higgins said further work is required to bring to light a fuller understanding of what occurred.

"This report now follows other reports on institutional abuse and the society that allowed it or offered a colluding silence. It took five years to complete, and there is now a responsibility to move without delay to the next phase of this process and to respond adequately and generously to the needs and rightful concerns of the survivors and other victims."

He added that the focus now as a State and as a community, must be to "urgently" do whatever is necessary to support the survivors.

Welcoming the publication of the report, President Higgins said his thoughts are with the mothers and of the infants who died.

He acknowledged "the children who survived and who continue to carry the trauma of their early lives, and beyond that the burden of being deprived of information about their birth parents; of all of those women, alive and dead, who have borne the scars of their experiences.

"The shame and secrecy imposed upon them, and the life-long burden for so many arising from trauma, bereavement, or separation from their children."

President Higgins said: "It is the State that is charged with safeguarding the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens, and it is the State that must bear primary responsibility for failing to provide appropriate supports for these tens of thousands of young women and their children.

"Even as the State must acknowledge institutional failings and its culpability in allowing conditions to persist in these homes - conditions that contributed to unnecessarily high rates of infant mortality - so also must those religious, social forces, and professions who rejected a role for the State in the protection of mothers and babies be accountable for the absence of respect for citizens’ rights that they allowed through their advocacy or collusion to prevail."

 Catherine Corless watching the live feed of the report into the Mother and Baby Homes at her home. Photograph: Ray Ryan

He thanked those, including Catherine Corless, who "through the decades urged investigation or sought the facts and who were ignored".

He said this work had came at "great personal cost", but "drew back the veil on what is a hidden scandal protected for far too long with its abuse of authority, denial of rights, and indeed common decency or courtesy in relation to the deaths of infants in these institutional settings."

"It is not a matter of getting past it but of learning from it and changing," the president said.