Author Archives: Bodger

Solicitor Kevin Higgins (top left) and Peter Mulryan (top right) in the Dáil today

This afternoon in the Dáil.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children, Disability, Equality and Integration discussed the Institutional Burials Bill with contributions from solicitor Kevin Higgins and Peter Mulryan, both of the Tuam Home Survivors Network.

From his opening statement, Mr Higgins said:

“… if this proposed bill was genuinely conceived as a measure to bring dignity to these children and a measure of closure to their families, it would probably would have been adopted on all sides and the need for pre-legislative scrutiny would not exist.

“To the members of this committee, I say: if you permit this measure to progress, you do so with your fingerprints all over it. And I believe you will come to regret it. This bill should be returned to whence it came. Nothing of worth, humanity or integrity, can be retrieved from it. I thank you, Mr Chairman.”

Later, in response to a question from Independent Senator Lynne Ruane, solicitor Kevin Higgins said:

“Dignity is one thing and it’s become an overused word throughout this process. The thing I know is that I’ve been involved in this for the past 7 years and, whereas the commission has acted independently, I know of not one single solitary, substantial thing done by any agency of the State, and certainly by the Department of Children, which has made any difference whatsoever.

“Dignity and justice are inseparable. If you cannot give these children a bona fide death certificate… this Act which may decide, is essentially asking us in many ways: would we like roses around the mass grave or would we like bluebells? We don’t want either.

“We want these children, the death certificates of these children are a fantasy. There is not, senator, a single medical certificate existing for one of those children in Tuam. You cannot get a death certificate without a medical certificate. This is not new law, that pertained then.

“These children, 25 per cent, according to the death certificates, died from something as nebulous as dibility. We’re all familiar with deaths too premature, births of children. The medical attendant certified that a child of three and a half, who never showed any symptoms of illness, had actually died of prematurity. Dignity without justice, justice without dignity, we need these children to be treated with respect.

“This bill, it’s a little bit like the Commission of Investigation Act. People say it’s not fit for purpose, it’s clearly not fit for anything. How many of them have been run into the ground?…”

Later:

“…I think the existing law is quite adequate. There is nothing to prevent, in the terms of Tuam with which I am familiar and which of course is perhaps the most documented, I would say that it is possible to excavate; it is many cases, from the oleo-archaeology I have seen, to carry out post-mortems; it is possible to reach, in many cases, a determination as possible or probable cause of death. And I think not leaving us behind collectively, this is not a matter just for survivors, the bill which created Mother and Baby Homes was something as innocuous sounding as the Local Government Temporary Provisions Act 1923.

“Just for your own benefit, deputy, I can tell you that bill was finally repealed in the year 2000. That’s 21 years ago.”

“….I would just say I don’t think we need this bill. I think we need to follow the law. I believe we need to resource the coroner’s service and allow people to give evidence at the coroner’s service as to what transpired, those still living, as to what transpired within those homes, in order to allow a coroner make a determination.”

Later:

Peter Mulryan said:

“I would like to know where my sister is at this moment. I’m years now looking for records of my sister. Every time I go to bed at night, I think about her. Why am I left this way? Is she dead or alive? I do not know. The information I got is so scant.

“It is unbelievable they do this to a human being that was recorded as born as a healthy baby. And yet nine months later, she died. From what? Was it malnutrition? Neglect? Were they drowned? We don’t know?

“But I want to know, about my sibling, where she is now. I’m being denied all this information.

“Like to do that to an innocent baby. Now they’re trying to stop us to find out anything about where she is. And we’re denied and denied, it’s so inhumane to think that the present stated governments and what they are doing to us is beyond, beggars belief.

“I am so, so disheartened with it, that they’re still trying to make those babies suffer when they’re out there, soul-searching for their lives. To be brought into the world and to be incarcerated, and the same with my mother, what was done to her also. It’s horrendous. That’s it.”

Previously: ‘Tread Softly, For Your Tread On The Bones Of My Family’

This afternoon.

*rolls up sleeve, taps vein*

Meanwhile…

Fintan O’Toole (left) and Kevin Myers

Via Kevin Myers [full article at link below]

…Seldom has Fintan O’Toole plumbed the depths that he did with his vilely dire column about Prince Philip, headlined “asylum-seeker and citizen of nowhere, but rich and white.”

This is typical of O’Toole’s habit of conflating intellectually unrelated issues, which on this occasion even referred to the genocide of the Jews.

In a survey of recent British history, he said: “In October 2016, high on the fumes of Brexit, the then prime minister…. Theresa May attacked those who “have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road”. She warned that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.

He re-interpreted her words as follows: “May was invoking a trope used against Jews by both the Nazis and by the Stalinist Soviet Union: the rootless cosmopolitan.”

This is simply astounding. To have compared Theresa May – apparently “high on the fumes of Brexit” – which she had opposed – with the anti-Semites of the Third Reich and the USSR is an honour perhaps never before conferred upon a British prime minister.

You can argue that May was wrong (and I would not) in her observations of the “citizen of the world”. But she did not use the term “rootless cosmopolitan,” and you cannot intellectually or morally suggest that her opinions can in any way be linked to the murder-machines of Auschwitz and the Gulag archipelago.

To do so is worse than defamatory. It makes her a retrospective handmaiden of The Final Solution…

…Four years ago, he joined the (highly-successful) lynch-mob against me, inventively alleging that I had said that a successful woman must be a ‘monstrous harridan’, a term I have never used.

Of the pay-controversy in the BBC at that time, I wrote: ‘Of course, in their usual, pitifully imitative way, Irish tabloids have tried to create a similar controversy here. That’s impossible, because of the ubiquity of Miriam O’Callaghan and Claire Byrne across the airwaves.’

O’Toole’s version of this runs as follows: ‘Myers tells women to forget equality and man up – but then complains about the ubiquity of Miriam O’Callaghan and Claire Byrne on the airwaves.’

As you can see, a complete fabrication; a process he clearly understands thoroughly when we look at his next words about the late prince.

“So why is Prince Philip’s rootlessly cosmopolitan background of so little concern to the culture warriors of the right? The answer is in those baby blue eyes……”

There we are; a straightforward accusation of racism…

…Of Philip, O’Toole then sneered: “Even the extreme privilege he attained through his marriage is construed as a kind of martyrdom: he gave up everything for his adopted country.”

He arrived in England poverty-stricken, but then began a remarkable career in the largest navy in the world. He turned out to be an outstanding and courageous sea-officer during the war and would very probably have ended up as First Sea Lord, but that possibility vanished with his marriage to the Queen (an event which O’Toole seedily describes as: “this nomadic adventurer, this nowhere man, seduces the princess royal”).

He then buckled down to seven decades of wearisome public service. The only time I met him was at Buckingham Palace about eight years ago, when he was stoically enduring the horrors of yet another state reception, at eight in the evening shaking the hand of every single person present. He was then 91. [more at link below]

Sanctimonious O’Toole in the Gutter Again (Kevin Myers)

Fintan O’Toole: Prince Philip – asylum-seeker and citizen of nowhere, but rich and white (Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times)

RollingNews

Thanks Charger

Anyone?

Warning: some sweary language.

Last night: Checking Out

Dr Maeve O’Rourke

This morning.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children, Disability, Equality and Integration debate on the Institutional Burials Bill.

Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns noted that human rights lawyer Dr Maeve O’Rourke had set out in her opening statement that the Attorney General and Minister for Justice can direct the coroner to act and asked if she’d like that to happen.

In response, Dr O’Rourke said:

“We absolutely have set out that the coroner has current obligations and that was the first question that I raised: what is the explanation for the absence of inquests to date?

“We need real answers to that. So that we know what we’re dealing with. What is it that the civil servants are saying as to why the coroner has been misapplied in this law. Is it that they don’t believe legally there’s any requirement? Or that they think it’s too expensive? But the coroner is currently obliged and we need to understand why it’s not happening.

“This legislation, I really believe, will disapply fully the coroner’s current jurisdiction. That’s the point of it. So until it comes into force, the coroner is obliged…but once an agency is established, under this law, in relation to a particular area, the coroner no longer has that legal obligation or power indeed.”

Later

Dr O’Rourke added:

“Things I’d like to point out. One being that the question of how, in relation to an inquest, goes beyond, particularly in Article 2 of the European Convention [on Human Rights) – respecting inquests goes beyond the immediate cause of death to include contextual causes and circumstances as well. So there’s evidence that needs to be gained that doesn’t just come from the body.

“It’s also worth pointing out Section 22 of the Coroner’s Act 1962 which states that: “Where the body of any person upon which it is necessary to hold an inquest has been buried and it is known to the coroner that no good purpose will be effected by exhuming the body for the purposes of an inquest, he/she may proceed to hold an inquest without exhumation.”

“And Section 23 takes this further stating that, where a body may be irrecoverable – which I think is important because, of course, we have hundreds of bodies with no known location and the answer can’t be to just not investigate – so where a body may be irrecoverable and the coroner considers it appropriate to hold an inquest, the minister may order the coroner accordingly.”

Meanwhile…

Phil Scraton, Professor Emeritus at School of Law in Queen’s University in Belfast

In response to a query from Labour TD Sean Sherlock, namely if the State passes the legislation in its current form, Ireland could be found to be in breach of Article 2 of the ECHR?

Law professor Phil Scraton, of Queen’s University. responded:

“…in relation to 70 years, I don’t know where that figure has come from? I don’t know how dreamt it up or why. But there will be an explanation I’m sure and administrative explanation. There should be no exclusion. I don’t believe that you can put a time limit on suffering. And I don’t believe you can put a time limit on lack of knowledge in relation to death.”

Later, he added:

“The final point I really wanted to make is that I think if the proposed bill goes ahead in its present state, this will breach Article 2 of the European Convention [on Human Rights]. There’s no question in my mind about that…Article 2 takes the whole process to a quite different level. It’s an obligation and it has a series of obligations that are imposed on the State.

“…we have to accept that the coronial process currently in Ireland is not fit for purpose, even in its ordinary, every day workings. Our report that comes out next week will demonstrate that. Having said that, coronial investigation is crucial and central to each and every one of these identifiable deaths. And therefore, the process has to connect the families who are suffering this appalling loss over time, has to accommodate that, in the context of a full and thorough investigation which takes me right back to the point that we started on which is how they died.

How each individual died is crucial to every family, the specific circumstances. That is the point of an inquest, that is what an Article 2 inquest would actually seek to uncover and to meet therefore the Irish state’s human rights and domestic obligations.”

More as we get it.

Earlier: ‘Tread Softly, For You Tread On The Bones Of My Family’

This morning.

Covid response critic Ivor Cummins reviews yesterday’s debate between Tim Martin (top left), CEO of Wetherspoon pub chain and Prof Sam McConkey, Head of the Department of International Health and Tropical medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons, on Claire Byrne Live on RTÉ Radio One.

Under discussion: true mortality rates and just who on earth is John Ioannidis?

Meanwhile…

Quarter of Covid deaths not caused by virus, new figures show (Daily Telegraph)

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly speaking to media before entering Government Buildings for a Cabinet meeting this morning

This morning.

Anyone?

Earlier: On Track

RollingNews

Meanwhile…

Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris arriving at Government Buildings this morning.

RollingNews

Peter Mulryan lived in the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway for four and a half years before he was adopted out. He believes a sister called Marian died at the home or was trafficked out of Ireland as a child.

This morning/afternoon.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children, Disability, Equality and Integration is discussing the Institutional Burials Bill.

The proposed legislation will allow excavations and re-interment of remains at former mother-and-baby home institutions. Coroners will not have jurisdiction in respect of bodies exhumed from sites

Chairman of the Tuam Home Survivors Network, Peter Mulryan, who will address the committee this afternoon, had sought legal advice as to whether the committee was acting within its powers in considering the Bill.

Peter writes:

This Bill reflects work undertaken during the tenure of former Attorney General Mr Séamus Woulfe.

It has two clear objects, (1) to circumvent existing law by dispensing with Inquests into the deaths of children lying in mass graves at Tuam, Bessborough, Sean Ros and (2) to clear the way for the commercial developments on other sites which are stained with the cruelty to generations of Irish women and children.

I am not aware of when the responsibility for burials, burial grounds and the exhumation of human remains became the responsibility of this so-called “Department of Children”.

Neither, am I aware of when responsibility for dealing with unexplained deaths was removed from the Coroners Service, the Department of Justice or An Garda Síochana to this “Children’s Department”

But perhaps the members of the Committee know best. They are perhaps better educated than I was. I was simply a hungry and frightened child in the Tuam ‘Home’ before being ‘boarded out’ as a child farm labourer in a cruel environment. They have ‘satisfied’ themselves that they are acting lawfully.

I am aware of course that it is ‘customary’ that the advice of the Attorney General is not published. I simply asked the Committee if they had sought advice. Their reply was to tell me to ‘take a hike’ that it was none of my business, whether they had or not.

I find their reply whether intended to be or not, offensive. I find it insulting and disrespectful.

My sister who I never met and who has no recorded burial place, lies in the Tuam cesspit into which hers and the bodies of other infants were thrown.

Not a single “Medical Certificate” is to be found for the children of Tuam.

Their Death Certificates are works of fiction.

This Committee now sits to consider a Bill which denies my sister and so many other children, even the dignity of possibly determining her cause of death.

Shame, I say. Shame on you all for even looking at this get out of jail card for the State and the Institutional Catholic Church.

I do not want your soft words.

I do not want your sympathy.

I want justice for all the children whose lives were lost due to the indifference and cruelty of Church and State.

I note that the only amendments to this Bill since the departure of Mr Woulfe and the creation of this new Government are designed to ensure that the owners of the sites where these children lie, are are adequately compensated for any inconvenience when removing the bones of the children.

It would indeed be a crime if the dandelions and weeds that sprout from mass graves of children were to be disturbed before these lands are converted into commercial developments.

Tread softly, for you tread on the bones of my family and those of my fellow survivors

Yours respectfully,

Peter Mulryan
‘Former Inmate of the Tuam Mother and Baby Prison’.

Meanwhile…

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) is calling for the Institutional Burials Bill to be significantly reformed.

ICCL and others believe this [not having a coroner] could impede an effective investigation into the cause and circumstances of death.

Overall, it believes the bill is inconsistent with a transitional justice approach.

Call for reform of mother-and-baby homes excavations legislation (RTÉ)