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

RollingNews

Garda Siochana conduct an Operation Fanacht  checkpoint in Dublin this afternoon

This morning/afternoon.

I’m walkin’ here.

RollingNews

Behold: a spectacular view from the International Space Station of an aurora generously slathered like salsa verde onto the Earth’s thermosphere just before midsummer 2017. To wit:

About 400 kilometres (250 miles) above Earth, the orbiting station is itself within the upper realm of the auroral displays. Aurorae have the signature colours of excited molecules and atoms at the low densities found at extreme altitudes. Emission from atomic oxygen dominates this view. The tantalizing glow is green at lower altitudes, but rarer reddish bands extend above the space station’s horizon. The orbital scene was captured while passing over a point south and east of Australia, with stars above the horizon at the right belonging to the constellation Canis Major, Orion’s big dog. Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major, is the brightest star near the Earth’s limb.

(Image: Jack Fischer, Expedition 52, NASA)

apod

From top: Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation members at the commission’s launch in 2015, from left: Professor Mary Daly, Judge Yvonne Murphy, Dr William Duncan.; Attorney General Paul Gallagher

 

This afternoon.

Attorney General Paul Gallagher has confirmed that no referendum will be required on the legal right to access birth certificates as was suggested in the Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation’s final report.

A bill will be published shortly on the information and tracing legislation.

Via RTÉ:

During the course of its investigation the Mother and Baby Homes Commission took evidence from people engaged in both sides of the argument.

On the one hand it noted how the main issue raised by lobby groups and individuals born in mother-and-baby homes was information and tracing.

It makes reference too to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which states the important principle that children are entitled to the information necessary to preserve their personal identity.

On the other hand, it reveals how social workers who had contact with birth mothers gave evidence to the commission about the ramifications of their privacy rights “being eroded” if birth information was revealed without their consent.

…Many of the women told them of their terror at the prospect of the proposed legislation on tracing being implemented.

Attorney General advises no referendum needed on birth cert access (RTÉ)

Earlier: Small Offerings

From top: Jonathan Swift face mask; David Langwallner

A Ted Talk by Brendan O’ Fúcbag, Eminent Irish Civil Servant to a Meeting of the Bilderberg Group in Lockdown. Location Geneva.

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town of Dublin, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, crowded with beggars, children, teenagers, all in rags, importuning every passenger for an alms, their simple homes now requisitioned by legitimate – if unfortunate – legal procedure.

Such people would traditionally face the happy prospect of a migratory adventure, to Britain, America, or the Indies. But now all borders are closed and that state policy of exporting the surplus population is impossible. And work at home is impossible because of the Level 5 lockdown and the tourism and hospitality trade now on the brink of extinction.
Decision Makers and Thought Leaders in these times have to make hard choices, tough choices, and honest choices.

I think it is agreed by our representatives of all Irish parties – that is to say, FG and FF – that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these inappropriate adults and children sound and useful members of the commonwealth, without the necessity for export or internal destitute deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants, children and adults, of the vulnerable, so they no longer need seek the charity of the state – our state, built by our forefathers – making great demands upon the welfare system, the charitable- that is to say, the NGO sector, and the courts by bringing frivolous and entirely valid cases. These people regrettably are welfare spongers, a drain on our resources.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. Now I have a rough calculation on the fiscal cost of such people, who contribute nothing to the economy. I believe they are part of humanity as are we all (hands raised to heaven for dramatic effect) – and we owe them compassion but firm treatment.

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned three million and a half, of these I calculate based on governmental estimates, helpfully provided, that in the light of current and future plagues, the potential decamping of all industry thanks to the presently suspended Apple judgment, the destruction of the hospitality and tourism trade and the depression now upon us, that we can no longer afford even to debate such frivolous notions as a wealth tax, social – that is, free – homes, or any other such redresses posited for ‘inequality’ (for to put it plainly, there is no more a solution to Inequality than to Gravity!).

Our learned friends in NAMA – National Association for Misery and Austerity and our esteemed thought leaders have advised us prudentially.

While acknowledging that austerity is the fate and burden of a great many of these fine people, we must also consider that with immigration now only a slight possibility, drastic measures will have to be introduced to deal with the over 2 and a half million surplus in the light of the virus.

How then should this awful number be reared and provided for? Which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, it is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture – those industries in receivership or bankruptcy and soon to be without the steady subvention of European subsidy.

They cannot afford houses or apartments – not even a humble rural cottage – many resort to entrepreneurship in the form of controlled substances or – worse, being idle, they take it upon themselves to play at lawyering, busying our judiciary with frivolous and costly actions “in the public interest”.Continue reading →

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