Baby homes commission chair asked to explain destruction of witness testimony recordings

The graveyard at the former mother and baby home, Bessborough, in Blackrock, Cork. Stenographers were not present at the confidential committee hearings which heard from 550 people. Picture: Laura Hutton

The chair of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission has been called on to explain why recordings of witness testimony were destroyed without detailed transcripts being made.

Fianna Fáil senator Erin McGreehan has reiterated calls for the authors of the Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes Report to come before the Oireachtas Children’s Committee.

The committee last week invited the commission to come before it to answer questions on the almost 3,000-page report.

“The destruction of audio recordings of the personal interviews given by survivors of mother and baby homes is truly phenomenal," said Ms McGreehan. 

"This report has not met any standards of decency or justice due to very obvious contradictions in the executive summary.

To add insult to injury, the voices and words of women who were interviewed have been destroyed.

While stenographers took verbatim notes from the interviews of the 19 people who spoke to the main commission, there were no stenographers present at the confidential committee hearings which heard from 550 people. This included hundreds of women who gave birth in these institutions and those who had been born in the homes.

“As is described in the report, notes were taken which were then checked against the recordings," said a spokesperson for the commission.

"Under the terms of reference, the confidential committee was required to hear witnesses 'as informally as possible' and then to compile a 'report of a general nature'."

Survivor groups have described this as a “thwarting of natural justice”.

Ms McGreehan said it is hard to believe that this has happened. 

“As far as I believed, the women were to receive copies of their testimonies and now that opportunity is gone.

“One of the many problems with the report was that the women’s testimonies were not accounted for properly and now we have no way of proving this.”

She added that taxpayers money had funded the report and the authors should be accountable and answer very legitimate questions.

“The commission contacted the minister previously to request legislation to save the database that they created during the investigation and given the seriousness of the queries into the report's findings they had the responsibility to act again if they believed they were legally bound to destroy the records,” she said.