Conor Sheehan: Demands State Protect Bessborough Site
Conor Sheehan addressed the Dáil to demand national intervention at the Bessborough site, urging the state to investigate and protect the grounds tied to institutional abuse. He recounted a personal family story and criticised the government for treating these sites as piecemeal issues rather than matters of state responsibility.
Conor Sheehan argues the state must take direct responsibility for surveying and protecting the Bessborough site. He says the matter is not one for private developers and points to obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights to investigate the history of institutional abuse.
Sheehan recounts a family case in which his grandaunt lost her child from a mother and baby home; the child was sent to Australia and lacked proper birth registration paperwork for decades. He highlights official admissions that no burial evidence was found outside the congregation burial ground and stresses the difficulties survivors face obtaining records.
Sheehan challenges mixed remarks from government figures - the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Minister O'Callaghan - and calls for a clear, national approach. He notes only two formal objections were lodged against development and points to powers available to the Minister for Housing under section 28 to issue guidelines. He urges designation of Bessborough as a site of conscience and a national commemoration to recognise survivors.
State responsibility and legal obligations
Conor Sheehan argues the state must take direct responsibility for surveying and protecting the Bessborough site. He says the matter is not one for private developers and points to obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights to investigate the history of institutional abuse.
Personal testimony and evidence gaps
Sheehan recounts a family case in which his grandaunt lost her child from a mother and baby home; the child was sent to Australia and lacked proper birth registration paperwork for decades. He highlights official admissions that no burial evidence was found outside the congregation burial ground and stresses the difficulties survivors face obtaining records.
Political context and calls for action
Sheehan challenges mixed remarks from government figures - the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Minister O'Callaghan - and calls for a clear, national approach. He notes only two formal objections were lodged against development and points to powers available to the Minister for Housing under section 28 to issue guidelines. He urges designation of Bessborough as a site of conscience and a national commemoration to recognise survivors.
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Transkrypcja
Go raibh maith agat Cathaoirleach, and I thank the Government Chief Whip for facilitating time for this debate at my request. I was struck Cathaoirleach by something my colleague Deputy O'Leary said earlier on in relation to the tendency by the state to treat the issues of institutional abuse as piecemeal and individual. Because if you look at industrial schools, Magdalene laundries, mother and baby homes, the fact of the matter is that this was incarceration that was funded by the state and facilitated by a corrupt institution, the Roman Catholic Church. And I was struck by some aspects of the Minister's speech in relation to no information about burial arrangements. And while you stated Minister that there are a number of locations within the grounds where burial could have taken place, there was no evidence of burial found anywhere except the congregation burial ground. And it brings me back to an experience in my own family because my grandaunt was in a mother and baby home in the 1950s. Her child was taken from her. Her child was sent to Australia. We only found this out about 10 or 12 years ago. And she could not make contact with her biological daughter for decades afterwards. And there was no paperwork surrounding her daughter's birth, registration of birth. It was all extremely, extremely difficult to obtain. And I note the previous applications, the application that was there for an SHD where this was ruled by on board planola as being unsuitable. The fact of the matter is that the Bessborough site requires a national intervention to prevent development. The state has obligations under the ECHR to investigate this and it should be responsible for surveying and protecting the site itself. This should not be something that should be left to any private entity. And some of the rhetoric that's coming from government in relation to this is markedly different and departs from what the official policy position is because the Taoiseach himself said Cork City Council should have purchased it. The Tánaiste said he was deeply uncomfortable and Minister O'Callaghan said the solution wasn't to CPO the site. I think that the state needs to step in here, that this should be a site of conscience. It should be a site of national commemoration because the way survivors have been treated here, as survivors are consistently treated by the official mechanisms of the state, is absolutely appalling. And the fact of the matter is there were only two people, you know Carmel Cantwell and my colleague Councillor Peter Horgan, who went and bothered to lodge a formal objection to this. The Minister for Housing has powers under section 28, he can issue ministerial guidelines.