What happened to women and children behind the high walls of Ireland's mother and baby homes casts a long and a dark shadow. For decades, these homes were shrouded in secrecy and the awful abuse of single mothers, the forced separation of families and the horrors of what happened in places like Tuam is still hard to comprehend. Those who survived these institutions, those who did not survive and their families are entitled to justice and to the truth.

I am sure the Taoiseach received thousands of emails and letters from survivors and families regarding the fast-tracking through the Oireachtas this week of the Bill relating to their records. There are huge concerns over the lack of consultation regarding this Bill and there are serious questions as to the reason the Minister for Children, Disability, Equality and Integration, Deputy O'Gorman, is proceeding with this approach.

The main concern is the intention of the Minister to transfer part of the commission of investigation's archive to Tusla without keeping a copy and a plan to seal the remainder of the archive for a period of 30 years. This will prevent people accessing their records from the Minister's archive and it will stop families accessing information about disappeared family members or babies buried in unmarked graves. I am sure the Taoiseach will agree that this is very wrong. It also means that all the information, the files and the records that show how abusive the system was will be withheld from the very people who are entitled to the truth.

The role of the State and the Government should be to remove the veil of secrecy surrounding mother and baby homes, not to reinforce it. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has yet to credibly explain why he is taking these actions. He says that it is a requirement under the legislation to preserve access to valuable information and evidence but that is not correct. There is no legal obligation under the 2004 Commissions of Investigation Act on the Minister to seal these records thereby preventing people accessing their information. In fact, the Commissions of Investigation Act enables the commission to deposit these records with the Minister for children on its dissolution. It is also not credible for the Minister to suggest that allowing survivors and families access to their records could in any way impede or undermine the operation of the commission. In fact, as the Taoiseach well knows, under data protection legislation survivors have the right to access their own data. Surely allowing people to access their information and records serves only to advance the cause of truth and justice. Rather than being bound to secrecy, the Oireachtas could legislate to unseal records and evidence gathered by the commission.

The proposed legislation needs to be scrapped. The Minister needs to produce an anonymised index of the records held. He needs to consult with survivors and their advocates and then draft the appropriate legislation that meets the needs and rights of survivors and the moral obligations of the State. That is the right thing to do.

Provision should also be made to enable survivors decide how to handle their records in the future. There is also a need for a dedicated archive to be set up at Sean MacDermott Street. I believe there is great merit in that proposal.

I believe that everyone in this House wants to see justice and truth for those women and children of the mother and baby homes. However, the Minister is doing the wrong thing and he is causing enormous alarm and great upset. I ask the Taoiseach to intervene immediately and that we would work together across the House to resolve this very important matter.

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. From my own perspective, the situation with regard to mother and baby homes represented a very dark period in our history and an appalling approach to the treatment of women and mothers and, at the time, the separation of child from mother. I accept the norms of later years but as an individual and as a parent, the separation of child from mother is something I can never get over but that was the practice at the time. In the modern era, in some respects we have moved on a lot in terms of creating support for families and mothers in challenging situations.

I do not believe this should be a matter of dispute in the House. I regret the degree to which the Deputy has cast aspersions on the Minister's intentions and motivation, which are very sincere and heartfelt. The legislation is being brought forward to provide urgent and critical legal clarity surrounding the future use of a database compiled by the mother and baby homes commission. It is genuinely being brought forward to preserve invaluable information, not to put it beyond reach, as has been reported: that is not the intention.

The Bill will make it possible for the database that has been compiled by the commission to be accessible under current legislation and make it available for use under future birth information and tracing legislation. It is important to state that the purpose of this legislation is also to preserve all of the records which the commission has compiled in the course of its work and it does not otherwise alter the governance of the commission’s archive under the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004.

The urgent issue in front of us is to ensure that we preserve the invaluable cache of information and not lose it forever. As Members know, in the course of its work, the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation has compiled a database of the mothers and children who were resident in the main mother and baby homes. The commission and the Government agree that this database will be of considerable assistance to those involved in providing information tracing services to individuals who were residents in these institutions. The database includes information extracted from institutions whose original records are now held in the main by Tusla. The legislation has been advanced to address concerns raised by the commission about the need for it to redact personal information and the impact which such redactions would have in terms of effectively destroying this database. The impetus for this Bill derives from the necessity to secure an urgent, bespoke solution to protect the complete records of the commission, including the database, before its expected dissolution by the end of this month.

The commission is due to submit its final report to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs by 30 October 2020 and then stand dissolved. Prior to its dissolution, under law it must deposit all commission records with the Minister. In the normal course, such records are then sealed for a period of 30 years prior to their transfer to the National Archives. This is a requirement of the Commission of Investigation Act 2004 and one we are bound to follow.

In advancing the legislation today, we are ensuring that an incredibly valuable and useful set of data can be used into the future and can support - I stress this - that essential information and tracing component that would otherwise be lost. It is critically important that we acknowledge that the commission received testimony from individuals who were former residents of mother and baby homes under a guarantee of absolute confidentiality. That is a commitment to many vulnerable people with real lived experience of post-trauma which cannot be reneged upon. This is not just simply a historical matter; it is a real living issue for many people. I will take further questions on that but this is about enabling people to access their records in time and to balance that. This Act is necessary before the end of this month to preserve these records.

We all share the Taoiseach’s view and all of us find it difficult to reconcile that Ireland, not in the dim and distant past but in the recent past, was such a hostile place for vulnerable women and their children. I said in my opening remarks that that is a shared view and the correct view. This, therefore, is not simply data. This is information and testimony that relates, as the Taoiseach set out, to real living people who have been traumatised and are on a journey in search of information and truth. They are in search of their own information, their own story, the stories of their love ones and, in some cases, the story of children that never emerged from these institutions and were buried in mass graves. We all know that.

The truth is the Minister has not engaged with the survivors. He has not engaged with their advocates. The truth is also that access for those people and their families has to be a tantamount concern of the State so the notion of sealing these records for 30 years, a time span in which surely many survivors of the mother and baby homes will have gone to their great reward and will never find the full truth and have access to their records, is unconscionable. Rather than defending this legislation, which the survivors, their advocates and their legal advisers all agree is unnecessary, unwarranted and causing distress, I ask the Taoiseach that we operate on a cross-party basis to resolve this matter to the satisfaction of the survivors in line with legal obligations. The Minister does not have to act as he is acting and I appeal to the Taoiseach to take a wider perspective.

I appeal to the Deputy to do it cross-party. She is not doing it. She has come in attacking the Minister’s bona fides. The Minister wants to help. What he is doing is sensible and the right thing to do before the end of October. Does the Deputy not see that? I have no doubt the Minister will talk to the Deputy.

The Taoiseach is attacking me, actually.

I am not attacking the Deputy. I am just saying if the Deputy wants cross-party-----

He is being very aggressive and it is entirely unnecessary.

I am not aggressive at all.

The Taoiseach should go back and listen to himself.

I am simply saying the Deputy is wronging the Minister and not accepting his bona fides. I am sure the Minister would be more than willing to talk to the Deputy’s spokesperson and other spokespeople. In the final report of the commission, the section on the confidential committee will reproduce the anonymised testimony of each individual who appeared before it. While the testimony will be anonymous and slightly summarised, people will be able to see and recognise their story told in their own words. The commission has said to the Minister that there are issues. The Minister agrees with the commission on the need to preserve the data because the data can be used in the future for tracing and assisting people. If we do not preserve the data and all the testimonies provided to the commission, that capacity to provide a comprehensive service in the future will be undermined. That is why the Bill is being brought in. It is not the final act in all this but it enables us to preserve the records and enables Tusla to be in a position in the future, with further legislation, to improve and enhance the capacity of people. Obviously there is a balance of competing rights. It is clear that the Bill is necessary to resolve the serious legal and practical issues raised by the commission in relation to finalising its records in accordance with the Commissions of Investigation Act. Most significantly:

... the Commission considers that it is obliged to redact sensitive personal information before depositing the records with the Minister... The Commission believes this database would be of considerable assistance [it agrees with the Deputy] to those involved in providing information and tracing services.

However, it accepts that redacting personal information would effectively render the databases and related records useless for this purpose. The Minister concurred with the commission’s assessment of the current and future value of the databases and deems it necessary to introduce this legislation to ensure complete records can be appropriately preserved and protected in the public interest ahead of the dissolution of the commission on 30 October 2020.

I can provide further data to the Deputy or others if required. We are willing to work here. The motivation is a positive and genuine one and I ask the Deputy to accept the Government’s bona fides on this.