Bid to retrieve witness tapes as TD seeks to extend the mother and baby commission by a year
Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore has put forward a motion to extend the timeframe of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins
It may now be possible to retrieve the destroyed audio recordings of mother and baby home survivors, the children's minister has been told.
The Mother And Baby Homes Commission of Investigation has contacted Roderic O'Gorman confirming that backup files have been found after he requested that they exhaust all possibilities of retrieving the recordings.
However, Mr O'Gorman said he didn't want to "unduly raise expectations" as it is still unclear if the files will contain the wiped audio.
He said he understood the anger felt by survivors, many of whom say they did not consent to the deletion of their testimony and has been working to find a solution and "to make sure that their voices are heard and then they're protected".
The minister said he immediately responded to the commission to arrange urgently for these tapes and their content to be made available to his department as part of the transfer of the archive which is beginning to occur.
He gave the commission 24 hours to respond, but they did not reply to him yesterday.
Mr O'Gorman said: "I just want to stress, I don't want to unduly raise expectations about these tapes. I very much hope they will contain the audio recordings of the 549 people who consented to be recorded.
"But it is not until the tapes are retrieved that they're reconnected to the parent IT system, and that they're transferred to my department that my department will be able to ascertain this for a fact.
"I think we're all aware that sometimes technology can let us down, these tapes are backup tapes they're disaster recovery tapes and that's their function."
Even if the recordings are on the tapes, he said he would have to seek legal advice from the attorney general on whether the content could be made available.
Asked about calls from survivors and campaigners to extend the commission beyond February 28 when it is due to wind up, the minister said this could delay the transfer of the archive to his department, and therefore delay survivors' ability to access their personal files.
Meanwhile, the Dáil will next week vote on a motion to extend the timeframe of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation by one year.
Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore who has put forward the motion said serious questions remain.
"This begs more questions than answers and fully supports my party’s calls for the Commission to be extended by one year to facilitate an examination of how they treated the survivors’ testimonies and stories they collected,” she said.
Some survivors have made complaints to the Office of the Data Protection Commission (DPC) over their destruction of the files as well as to gardaí. The DPC have also raised their own concerns and written to the commission asking them to provide the legal basis they used for destroying the audio.
Ms Whitmore added: “We in the Social Democrats have a real concern that there is no legal basis for what the Commission has done here.
“There are concerns that if it does wind down, investigations cannot be fully carried out and questions will remain unanswered as a result."
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