Holly Cairns demands action on Bessborough burials

Taoiseach, I want to take up where we left off yesterday. When explaining why the government was not going to buy Bessborough, you said, and I quote, excavation without evidence of location is neither feasible nor lawful. Because under the Institutional Burials Act 2022, the government can only start an excavation where it is satisfied burials have taken place and there is evidence those burials were, quote, manifestly inappropriate. You then said, and I quote, I am advised that the legal threshold cannot be currently met because the location of many of the burials remains unknown. I can't have been the only person who was listening and stunned. The government knows that 859 children and 19 women who were incarcerated at Bessborough are missing, presumed dead. It knows that the Commission investigation into mother and baby homes said it was highly likely that burials had taken place on this land. It has all the evidence of abuse, suspicious deaths, disappeared women and children, and likely burial, and you're telling us that you're powerless to act. Because legislation that your last government drafted and enacted is preventing you. This really is beneath contempt. I want to repeat again what you said yesterday, that the government needs evidence burials were, quote, manifestly inappropriate before it can intervene. Are you actually trying to say that these burials were in any way manifestly appropriate? That discarding the remains of hundreds of children without a scrap of paper recording of the burial location is appropriate? Because you now seem to be using that as an excuse for inaction, when what you should be doing is moving heaven and earth to find these children and 19 women who disappeared. Two weeks ago you told me the Cork City Council should have CPO'd the land. Councillors have now voted unanimously, twice on Cork City Council, to CPO the land, most recently Taoiseach, this week on Monday. The councillors have been told that they can't do that because the council doesn't have capital. Taoiseach, you hold the purse strings. Quite frequently when I ask you an important question you come back and speak about how I don't have a monopoly on caring, about your bona fides, and about how much you care. Respectfully, it doesn't matter how much you care unless that's mirrored some way in your actions. So can you please refrain from doing that in your reply today and focus on answering the questions. You are the Taoiseach of this country, if you cared about this issue you would act. You could amend the Burials Act, you could open the archives, you could negotiate with the developer, you could give money to Cork City Council to CPO the land. Your hands aren't tied, you're sitting on them, there's a difference. Taoiseach, please. Yeah, a number of years ago Deputy, I met with Maureen Considine and with some survivors in Bessborough, and you've often said we should talk to survivors. Their perspective is far different to yours in respect of Bessborough. I would refer you to an article in today's Irish Examiner by Maureen Considine in respect of this issue, and she established the CSSA, the Cork Survivors Alliance, in respect of this issue, in terms of the burials in Bessborough. And the fundamental issue they wanted was to, first of all, establish where their babies were buried. But their sense was that the mothers at the heart, and I quote, the mothers at the heart of our alliance are being overshadowed by an abstract human rights debate. Any demand for further disturbance of remains without their explicit input and consent is not an act of justice. It is a repetition of the original trauma where an institution exerted control over their children's burial. These mothers have inherent rights to privacy and space to grieve in peace. And they don't accept, by the way, the assessment, the Cork Survivors and Supporters Alliance, they wanted to find out where the mother's babies were buried. And they were involved in legal submissions to a different application, and employed experts and so forth. By the way, they don't believe that the current area of lands, which is the subject matter of the Bòrd planh Ola recommendation, is where the babies are buried, following their work and following the experts that they availed of. And so there are different perspectives from different survivors, which you've ignored in all of your presentations. I also would refer you to an article by Anna Gorman, based in Nimerick, who lost her baby, who died 20 minutes after birth, as an article in the Irish Independent, some time ago, which you should read. And the point is, you have an extraordinary habit of distorting things that I say and conflating them. Because it's 60 acres we're talking about here. The planning permission for housing is not for the entirety of 60 acres. It's for a part of it, okay? There are three other, or two other lots of land. There's state services on the land. There's a hundred people working in different services in Bessborough. There's child care there, and so forth. It's been an active area of human activity for a long, long time, long after the war broke out. I know a lot about it because I've been around a long time in that area, I live nearby. So, I'll come back to you in a second. Taoiseach, at the end of the day, here are a few things that we know, and a few things that we don't know. So we know the Commission of Investigation found that it's highly likely there's babies buried on the grounds. We don't know why they made that recommendation. Why? Because the archives are sealed. You took exception to that word yesterday. Closed. Call it whatever you want. That's why. We don't know why the Commission made that recommendation. We know that archaeologists walked the site. We don't know what they said or recommended, because the archive is sealed. We know that there was no ground-penetrating radar used. As far as we know, no soil samples, no test excavations. We don't know why. We know that we have this information for Choom and for Sean Ross Abbey. We don't have it for Bessborough. We don't know why. So your whole argument amounts to we simply don't have enough information to meet the threshold for excavation and examination. Why don't we know? By design. It is very clearly by design that we don't have this information. I take it from your reply, your answer to my questions was no, so I'll ask you this. Taoiseach will respond now, Deputy. Taoiseach, please. Deputy, you attacked the Institutional Burials Act. You implied it was imposed by this government. It actually was agreed by the entire Dáil. The entire Dáil, including a party. Respectfully, Deputy, respectfully, it works both ways. It was agreed. When I spoke to Deputy Batchick yesterday, who engaged in a constructive engagement, and asked certain things. So you can't draw conclusions from yesterday in terms of what the government's position on this ultimately will be, because we said we would reflect on it. That's what I said yesterday. And that's what I intend to do. And I think we need to be mindful of all survivors. I think you've been too dismissive of those I've quoted this morning. I met with them, I'd say just three or four years ago. I was very taken by what they said. They'd come to the view that they wanted a memorial, a proper memorial. They felt their children within those grounds. They believed, by the way, there was a burial ground there. That it wasn't ad hoc, scattered all over the 60 acres. There's a very telling phrase in the article. If I could finish, it's a very sensitive issue. There wasn't a blade of grass to store in that site. And the way that site was organised, there would have been a burial ground. I accept the point we haven't located it, but there would have been a burial ground there. But it's not where they...