On the mother and baby homes report, I have expressed the concern that today we should not necessarily be issuing a State apology. We should have agreed a date with the survivors and their organisation. I have an added concern now in relation to how we will deal with information and tracing legislation to help the survivors and their families. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, said this morning that it would be the end of the year before we would look at this. This is deeply concerning. This is absolute priority legislation for all these families. There is a debate whether we need legislation at all, but I will leave that aside. We can bring in emergency legislation for Covid and we brought in emergency legislation in the past to bail out the banks. Given what has transpired for these people, surely the women, their families, their children and everyone deserves this legislation to be brought forward rapidly in the coming weeks.

I do not disagree with the Deputy on the need for this legislation. It is essential. There was considerable debate in the last Dáil concerning a legislative template around access to information and tracing. It proved impossible to get consensus in the House at the time to get that legislation passed. The Government has looked at this afresh and the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, as he said this morning, is taking a different approach to this. Government is of the view we need to stretch this to ensure access to information for all involved.

On the timeframe, we want to work with Members of the House and other parties in the House. We will do everything we can at Government level, with the Attorney General's and other advice. The Minister and his Department are taking on specialist advice in relation to GDPR, for example. I take the Deputy's point about the application of GDPR in terms of access to personal information and data. We will do everything we can to accelerate that.