Last night.

Tuam campaigner Breeda Murphy and adoptee and activist Eunan Duffy discuss the fallout from this week’s Mother and Baby Home Report [launched on Tuesday by Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman, top right alongside Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister of State for the Department of Education, Josepha Madigan (left)].

This is the fifth in a series of shows with Eunan and Breeda dealing with Mother and Baby Homes across the island of Ireland and the issues facing birth mothers and adoptees. All are available here.

RollingNews

Earlier: A Sorry Sorry

Birthright

Taoiseach Micheal Martin giving a State Apology following publication of the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in the Dáil on Tuesday

This afternoon.

Paul Jude Redmond (born in Castlepollard Mother & Baby Home home in 1964) and Clodagh Malone (born in Saint Patrick’s on the Navan Road, Dublin), both of the Coalition of Mother And Baby home Survivors (CMABS) write:

Now that the Commission of Inquiry has issued its long overdue final report and the Taoiseach has formally apologised in the Dáil, it seems an opportune moment to draw a deep breath and step back and reflect on the wider issues surrounding these historic events. The state are already trying to exclude as many survivors as possible from redress by arbitary setting a deadline of a “six month” stay.

The sad fact is that losing a baby to forced adoption is a traumatic event in a mother’s life causing a form of post traumatic stress disorder and it makes zero difference how soon after birth this trauma is inflicted;the horror remains, the depression, anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks and secondary infertility, etc. etc.

Sadly, the commission’s final report is deeply flawed although it could never have been any other way since its narrow terms of reference effectively excluded important sections of our wider community.

Up to 15,000 people in Ireland and abroad were illegally adopted during the timeframe under investigation and they were excluded despite the fact that our campaign for truth and justice emphasised that many of these people were unaware they were adopted and consequently, they have spent their entire lives giving false, misleading and potentially lethal family medical histories to doctors and hospital staff.

Equally, many of the religious run adoption agencies who were an integral part of the overall ‘system’ were known hotbeds of criminality and little more than baby traffickers. Neither of these vital issues were addressed and are thus outstanding matters still to be dealt with.

Furthermore the rest of the county homes were ignored by this commission – more than two dozen escaped investigation. These institutions were simply the renamed Victorian workhouses that newly independent Ireland inherited from our former colonial oppressors.

During the early days of free Ireland, most of them had no electricity or basic sanitary facilities; babies died by the thousands in these hellholes directly as a result of the early state’s policy of semi-official discrimination against single mothers and their babies. Where is their truth and justice? It appears that despite our age, we will have to dust off our placards and Zimmerframes and head for the Dáil again.

We listened to both Taoiseach Martin and Tánaiste Varadkar apologise in the Dáil against a backdrop of empty seats. It seems the vast majority of our so-called public representatives didn’t feel that it was worthy enough to attend the House .

We noted one thing in common with both their speeches. Neither mentioned their own political parties nor their culpability in what is essentially Ireland’s own little holocaust (9,000 babies dead and many thousands more deaths ignored): insult headed upon injury and salt thrown in the wounds by the empty seats.

It appears both Taoiseach Martin and Tánaiste Varadkar have been reading the Catholic church’s bumper book of excuses as both tried desperately to deflect the blame from the state and their respective political parties. The state making war on women and children was an all party pursuit but no! Apparently it was ‘society’s fault’.

As another TD noted “when everyone is to blame, no one is to blame”. How convenient but then again they are merely following the disingenuous lead of the Inquiry’s report which laughingly says:

“There is no evidence that women were forced to enter mother and baby homes by the church or state authorities”

The following sentence says that:

“Most women had no alternative.”

We, the taxpayers of Ireland, paid over 20 million Euros for this contradictory mess.

Many of the statements in the report mention certain issues but then claim they can neither be proved nor disproved. Is the Commission saying they don’t accept the testimonies of the 500 plus Survivors who testified to the Inquiry? It certainly looks like it. What was the point in our testifing if our word was to be doubted? Our testimonies ARE the proof.

Neither of this sickening double act in the Dáil bothered to talk about real and immediate action for living survivors.

Our esteemed Protestant crib mate and seasoned campaigner Derek Leinster of the Bethany home group ’98 has consistently maintained that the living survivor community must take priority over exhuming dead bodies or yet another talking shop; this simple message has clearly escaped the double act who of course did not commit to the second recommendation of the Inquiry that a referendum be held to overcome the complex legal quagmire  that currently hampers all attempts to open the sealed adoption record so that aging mothers who lost their children to adoption, and adoptees, may finally reunite.

But not to worry,”it will be examined”, they proclaim. Oh joy, yet another faceless committee to deal with. Be still my beating heart… [Editor’s note: Attorney General Paul Gallagher has ruled that a referendum will not be necessary]

Survivors have heard enough political waffle to last a lifetime, we need action while some of us are alive…now where’s our Zimmerframes and bus passes?

Earlier: Birthright

Small Offerings

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