Senator Gerard Craughwell - speech from 14 Oct 2020

Good morning, good morning. Minister, there's been a lot of talk today about the rights of the child and the rights to their parentage, their historical background, and I support all of that. But I'm coming to this debate, Minister, as somebody who grew up in Galway in the 1960s and 70s. No young girl in my time in Galway got pregnant. A lot of young girls went away on holidays. And came back nine months later without a child. I have personal experience of somebody that I know, somebody who's very dear to me, whom we knew was pregnant, who we believed went to a family to be looked after during her pregnancy. And when all of this started, we heard about Bespera and we heard about being confined in a home. And we heard of the trauma that that woman went through. She wasn't a woman, she was a child at the time she was pregnant. And the trauma that that woman went through, and goes through every day of her life, remembering what happened to her. And she's only one of them that I know. The story of the girl who sought to find her mother, and I agree with tracing, but when she found her mother, her mother met her in a cafe in Dublin, explained the circumstances behind the pregnancy and the delivery of the child, said to her, Now you know all you need to know, I don't ever want to see you again. Can you imagine the devastation to both lives? Can you even for one moment think what's going on here? The 4,000 odd emails we've had in the last few days are heartbreaking. They're from people who want to know more. But the couple of hundred emails from those who don't want anything to be known about their lives, their previous lives. The women who delivered children had their hearts broken to take the child off them. Not willingly give it up, but to take it off them. And then send them back to wherever they came from. And they lived with that all their lives. Some of them went on and married and had families and have this deep secret. Deep, deep, deep in their minds and their hearts. And they live every day with it. And we're about to blow all that wide open somewhere. And we really have to think about what we're doing. The right to trace your parentage is vital. The right of the child that was the mother. Because God damn it, no man ever came forward and said, I fathered that child. We hid away in the background, so we did. And let the girls take the full brunt of societal condemnation. I am so, so distressed by this. I can't begin to tell you. Because I had many dear friends who were pregnant in the 60s and 70s. Who disappeared from Galway and came back nine months later. Nobody ever asked where they were. We all knew. Nobody ever spoke about it. It was buried. And the poor unfortunate child that was born. Nobody ever questioned what happened to that child. The women who came to the commission. And as my colleague Senator McDool said. They went in on the basis that what they said was between them and those they were giving witness to. I just don't know where this is going to lead us. But it is leading us to somewhere that we need to be very, very careful. And to rush it through this house in two days. We were promised this would stop. Democracy demands that legislation would be scrutinised. This is not scrutiny of legislation. You have the numbers on that side of the house to ram through anything you want. And that's not fair. It's not fair on you. It's not fair on us. I'm going to finish on this. One last point Minister. I am absolutely appalled that you allowed section 6 to finish up in this bill. Absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it. Personal injuries. Why is that in here? This is heartbreaking enough as it is. Thank you. Thank you.