News that the remains of some 800 babies have been found on convent grounds in Tuam has shocked the people of Ireland. Only for the efforts of a local historian, Catherine Corless, these children would forever remain nameless in the ground, forgotten in death as they were in life. This scandal of neglect and maltreatment causing the deaths of children has understandably made headlines across the world. Unfortunately and tragically, Tuam is not an isolated case. Dozens of these homes were in operation in Ireland from the late 1880s well into the 20th century.

We simply do not know how many of these mass graves might exist. Church and State cannot be allowed to abdicate responsibility in this matter. The Government must face up to this shameful period of our recent history and shine a light on the dark secrets of mother and baby homes. Citizens need to know who died and why, and the locations of their remains.

Will the Government initiate a full audit of the 25,000 files currently in the possession of the Health Service Executive? We need to know how many concern illegal adoptions, who was responsible, who knew about what was happening, and what they did or did not do. What is needed now is a full public inquiry into practices at all mother and baby homes across the State. It is time to shed light on what led to the shocking infant mortality rates, the burial of untold hundreds of babies in mass graves, and the routine illegal adoption and trafficking of an unknown number of the surviving children. Can the Minister tell us today whether the Government will initiate a full public inquiry into the practices at mother and baby homes across the State?

Like every Member of this House and every citizen in the country, I thought we had become inured to the things that fall out of our dark past. However, the discovery of a mass grave of infants and children is something so shocking that it jars all of us to our core. The Government is determined to get to the bottom of what exactly is the situation in Tuam. All the questions the Deputy asked must be answered not only in regard to Tuam, but also the other centres. For that reason, we have established an interdepartmental group which has already begun to meet and will report back to Government as quickly as is practicable and possible, but certainly no later than the end of this month, on how we should proceed. This Government is ruling out nothing in terms of what needs to be done. The sense almost of revulsion of the people of Ireland at the callous disregard for the most innocent of our young people has to be met with openness and clarity, which is what the Government will do.

Citizens have been confronted in recent years with one revelation after another regarding the abuse of people in religious-run institutions that were supported by this State. The scale of the abuse perpetrated against Irish women and children that has been exposed by these cases is absolutely horrific. In order to get to the truth of these scandals, it was necessary to have the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, generally known as the Ryan commission, whose report was published in 2009, the Ferns inquiry, the Cloyne report and the Murphy report. We also had the scandal of the Magdalen laundries. The State is still failing to face up to its responsibilities in regard to the Bethany Home or to apologise to its victims. If we were to have adopted the approach the Government is now advocating in regard to the Tuam babies scandal, the various inquiries and reports to which I referred would not have seen the light of day. Is it not crystal clear, therefore, that a full public inquiry is the only conceivable course of action when confronted with the gravity of the scandal that has now come to light in Tuam?

The Deputy clearly prepared her second question before she heard my answer to the first one.

The Minister did not indicate in his reply whether the Government will initiate a full public inquiry. That is the question I asked.

We need to get to the bottom of all these issues. In the early decades of this State, attitudes towards women, particularly unmarried women, and to the most vulnerable in our society revealed again and again a shocking litany of disregard for citizens. This Government was the first, after decades, to deal with the case of the Magdalen laundry women, and I am proud of our record in addressing it. We will address this issue, too. We will address it in a comprehensive way, because it is not, as the Deputy rightly says, confined to Tuam. We need to scope out exactly what questions must be answered. We are working at this time on the records; there has been no excavation and we do not yet know what is in those graves in Tuam. We need to scope out, in a comprehensive way, what exactly needs to be examined, and that is what the interdepartmental group is doing. Its report will come to Government in a matter of weeks. It has taken decades for our country to get to the level of maturity where we look back now in shock at what happened in the past. We will have to reveal the truth about those dark days with clarity and purpose, and that is what the Government will do.

I wish to raise the same issue. Like everybody else, since the news broke last week I cannot get the image out of my head of 800 tiny babies and helpless children neglected, starved and eventually discarded. I respect and acknowledge the endeavours of Catherine Corless and her committee, who initially sought to erect a memorial to the children they knew had died in the home. The extent of what they discovered, however, was way beyond what was expected and now requires so much more than a memorial or indeed an apology.

Today, finally, the atrocity is being openly discussed in the national media, but I am concerned about the sanitised language that is being used when discussing it. We are hearing references to "burials" when, in fact, we are talking about bodies being disposed of in a septic tank. The discovery in the 1970s by two boys revealed the nature of the disposal of the remains. Clearly, these were not respectful burials - they were disposals, as though these children were subhuman. It is stomach-churning. The UN pulled no punches recently when it described the Magdalen laundries as places of forced labour, with slavery-like conditions. There appears to be a type of reluctant acceptance of the reality of what happened here, but the UN was able to call it what it was. We need to call it what it is in this instance and that requires clarity.

Tuam was not the only mother and baby home where this type of thing happened. We already know about the Bessborough case, for example, where there were horrific stories about the mortality rates. This morning, there were repeated references in the media to what the Archbishop had to say about the Tuam revelations. I have more interest at this time in hearing what the Minister for Justice and Equality and the Garda Commissioner have to say about it. I agree with Deputy McLellan that a public inquiry is needed, and there must be an immediate acknowledgement of that from the Government. Will the Minister commit to holding such an inquiry? Does he agree that the nature of the disposal of the bodies suggests that the intention was that their disposal remain a secret? One has to ask why that would be the case. If this septic tank was discovered anywhere else in the country other than beside a religious institution, it would already have been declared a crime scene. It begs the question of why, in fact, it has not been declared as such, which it should and must be.

I agree with much of what the Deputy has said. Characterising these children as being discarded is an accurate characterisation which goes to the attitude the State had over those decades to the children of unmarried mothers. It is shocking, unacceptable and appalling, and we have to meet that in our time, as we have met other awfulness from our past. Speaking on behalf of the Government, I am ruling nothing out as to how we should proceed. We are scoping out how far this went. Whether there are other locations we need to look at needs to be determined, as well as what records exist within the HSE or religious institutions. We will scope this out in the coming weeks and come back to the House with a proposal. We will then have a proper cross-party debate, as we all want, in order to have the full truth exposed in regard to these apparently horrific events which scar our past.

An interdepartmental scoping exercise is fine, but it has to happen in parallel with this discovery being designated a crime scene. We know that in previous cases involving mother and baby homes, drug trials took place in some instances. Did that happen in this location? Such questions need to be part of the inquiry. Could such trials have accounted for the very high mortality rates? The persons who ran the homes clearly treated the women and children there as subhuman. Not to deal with this case in an equal manner to those of other unearthed human remains reaffirms that status posthumously. No Department and no set of paper records can reveal what the Garda, the State Pathologist or forensic anthropologists can reveal.

They can tell us if crimes were committed at this scene. It is possible to fully understand and to know what went on here but for that to happen, the authorities must do what they did not do before. They must act. Could drug trials have contributed to the high death rates here? Is it known if inquests were held into these deaths? What exactly is the Government inquiring into? What Departments are involved? Will the Minister declare this, or seek to have this declared, a crime scene?

It is not for me to declare a crime scene. That is a matter for the Garda Síochána, the independent investigator of crime in this country. All the data need to be looked at and that is what we are determined to do in a comprehensive way, as I have indicated to the House. The interdepartmental group is meeting. A range of Departments are involved, including the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, the Department of Health and the Department of Justice and Equality. There may be other Departments involved and I will get a full list of the membership to the Deputy. We do not want to embark on a process that is not comprehensive and will leave things out.

These things are decades in the making. This awfulness happened many decades ago but we will now, in our time, have a comprehensive look at what happened, reveal as much truth as we can from what lies within any official records and have such inquiries as are appropriate, including criminal inquiries if that is deemed appropriate by the Garda authorities, the investigators of crime.