Mother and babies homes information sealed for 30 years

Vetch

stockshares wrote: »

Anyone who wants to know what the Clan Project are campaigning for should listen back to Dr Maeve O Rourke's interview with Sarah McInerney on Rte 1 which finished at 5.30pm today.

The Clan Project is not seeking that Peoples Testimony be made Public .

It is seeking that administrative records be made public so that the whole system and how it was run is known. It does not want a generalised story to be told.

It wants individuals health records be made available to them and that anything that happened to them in the M+B homes be made available to them.

It wants to insure that exactly what happened in the M+B homes is made known and in order to do that they need to ensure that the administration files are made public and not buried.

These admin files will have info relating to payments made and received and vaccine trials etc.

It also wants assurances that when people seek their info from Tuslas Database that it is not redacted.

Tusla have a history of ignoring GDOR rules and giving adopted people redacted files so the Clan Project want to ensure that Tusla will provide complete files to those who seek them.

Seconding the suggestion that people listen back to this interview. Maeve O'Rourke was really clear about what they are seeking. There is a huge amount of misinformation in this thread about records being made public and lots of other things, which must be scary reading for anyone whose records are caught up in this.

stockshares

Cluedo Monopoly wrote: »

Excellent interview. The nuns did try to cover up the vaccine trials but maybe the commission will get more operational data.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-20430889.html

Thanks for the link.

From the Article it seems there were 6 trials in all.

Very sinister by GlaxiSmithKline to keep a file on Mari Steed

Quote
There it lay until 2011 when Ms Steed made a series of Freedom of Information and Data Protection requests to the HSE (who then held the Bessborough records) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

It was at this point she discovered the pharmaceutical giant had kept a substantial file on her — and not all of it related to her medical records. Referred to as “GSK 36” in some material released to her, the records finally confirmed her participation in the trial. However, the company also had a file monitoring media appearances she made talking about the issue.

This included press cuttings from a range of newspaper interviews given by Ms Steed — some given nearly 10 years apart. Also included were typed transcripts from a number of different radio interviews.

skooterblue2

Feisar wrote: »

Vaccine trials?!?

Oh yeah they trialled all sorts of medications. They were no better than cattle on a farm for testing purposes and the State arrange the trials with the industrial partners like Pfizer and Bayer were two I remembered.

stockshares

Cluedo Monopoly wrote: »

Yep it's true unfortunately. One of the reasons why the victims want their health records.

http://adoption.ie/my-front-page/our-work/vaccine-trials/

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-20430889.html

Unless I'm midreading the article there were 6 trials in all.

Quote
3 trials by the Wellcome Foundation
The first trial took place between December 1960 and November 1961 in four mother-and-baby homes: St Patrick’s on the Navan Rd in Dublin (14 children); Bessborough in Cork (25 children); Castlepollard in Westmeath (six children); and Dunboyne (nine children). Four children from the Stamullen home in Meath were also used for that trial.

The second trial involved 69 children from St Anne’s Industrial School in Booterstown, Dublin. They were administered an intranasal rubella vaccine. A further 53 children from the wider community in Kilcullen, Co Westmeath, were also used in the trial.

The first two trials were carried out by Professor Irene Hillary and Professor Patrick Meenan from UCD’s Department of Microbiology, as well as other doctors.

The third trial involved 53 children in a number of residential institutions in Dublin including St Patrick’s Home, Madonna House, Bird’s Nest, and Boheenaburna. A total of 65 children living at home in the community in Dublin also received the vaccine.

The aim of the third trial was to compare commercially available batches of the 3-in-1 vaccine — Trivax and Trivax D — with that of equivalent vaccines prepared for the trial. There has been no published paper or report of this trial, but the Eastern Health Board was aware of it being conducted

Yet a fourth was admitted by GSK in 2011,

and the 1930-35 trials of a Burroughs Wellcome vaccine for diphtheria, carried out on 2,000 children in residential institutions, were uncovered by Michael Dwyer of UCC’s School of History just a month before publication of the report.

It also failed to mention the 1965 trial of a 5-in-1 vaccine carried out on Philip Delaney at Bessborough.

Igotadose

Deleted User wrote: »

Do you really think that those records will be believed?

Adopted people can only access their information if their mother agrees, and vice versa.

Why wouldn't they be believed? That's a silly argument.

Feisar

stockshares wrote: »

Have you been living under a rock?

I try and avoid sad news stories like this so wouldn’t have tuned into the details.

stockshares

Feisar wrote: »

I try and avoid sad news stories like this so wouldn’t have tuned into the details.

Details are important.

Why are you posting here if you have no interest in the details?

Feisar

stockshares wrote: »

Details are important.

Why are you posting here if you have no interest in the details?

No interest is a bit strong. The sealing of the records and the why around it is why I’m here. The vaccine trials was something I hadn’t picked up on the radio/tv.

stockshares

stockshares wrote: »

Thanks for the link.

From the Article it seems there were 6 trials in all.

Very sinister by GlaxiSmithKline to keep a file on Mari Steed

Quote
There it lay until 2011 when Ms Steed made a series of Freedom of Information and Data Protection requests to the HSE (who then held the Bessborough records) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

It was at this point she discovered the pharmaceutical giant had kept a substantial file on her — and not all of it related to her medical records. Referred to as “GSK 36” in some material released to her, the records finally confirmed her participation in the trial. However, the company also had a file monitoring media appearances she made talking about the issue.

This included press cuttings from a range of newspaper interviews given by Ms Steed — some given nearly 10 years apart. Also included were typed transcripts from a number of different radio interviews.

There is another thread about this subject running as well here
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058124483
I posted on the 6 trials in that thread. In case nobody has seen that thread the 6 Trials were:

Quote
3 trials by the Wellcome Foundation
The first trial took place between December 1960 and November 1961 in four mother-and-baby homes: St Patrick’s on the Navan Rd in Dublin (14 children); Bessborough in Cork (25 children); Castlepollard in Westmeath (six children); and Dunboyne (nine children). Four children from the Stamullen home in Meath were also used for that trial.

The second trial involved 69 children from St Anne’s Industrial School in Booterstown, Dublin. They were administered an intranasal rubella vaccine. A further 53 children from the wider community in Kilcullen, Co Westmeath, were also used in the trial.

The first two trials were carried out by Professor Irene Hillary and Professor Patrick Meenan from UCD’s Department of Microbiology, as well as other doctors.

The third trial involved 53 children in a number of residential institutions in Dublin including St Patrick’s Home, Madonna House, Bird’s Nest, and Boheenaburna. A total of 65 children living at home in the community in Dublin also received the vaccine.

The aim of the third trial was to compare commercially available batches of the 3-in-1 vaccine — Trivax and Trivax D — with that of equivalent vaccines prepared for the trial. There has been no published paper or report of this trial, but the Eastern Health Board was aware of it being conducted

Yet a fourth was admitted by GSK in 2011,

and the 1930-35 trials of a Burroughs Wellcome vaccine for diphtheria, carried out on 2,000 children in residential institutions, were uncovered by Michael Dwyer of UCC’s School of History just a month before publication of the report.

It also failed to mention the 1965 trial of a 5-in-1 vaccine carried out on Philip Delaney at Bessborough.

smurgen

stockshares wrote: »

There is another thread about this subject running as well here
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058124483
I posted on the 6 trials in that thread. In case nobody has seen that thread the 6 Trials were:

Quote
3 trials by the Wellcome Foundation
The first trial took place between December 1960 and November 1961 in four mother-and-baby homes: St Patrick’s on the Navan Rd in Dublin (14 children); Bessborough in Cork (25 children); Castlepollard in Westmeath (six children); and Dunboyne (nine children). Four children from the Stamullen home in Meath were also used for that trial.

The second trial involved 69 children from St Anne’s Industrial School in Booterstown, Dublin. They were administered an intranasal rubella vaccine. A further 53 children from the wider community in Kilcullen, Co Westmeath, were also used in the trial.

The first two trials were carried out by Professor Irene Hillary and Professor Patrick Meenan from UCD’s Department of Microbiology, as well as other doctors.

The third trial involved 53 children in a number of residential institutions in Dublin including St Patrick’s Home, Madonna House, Bird’s Nest, and Boheenaburna. A total of 65 children living at home in the community in Dublin also received the vaccine.

The aim of the third trial was to compare commercially available batches of the 3-in-1 vaccine — Trivax and Trivax D — with that of equivalent vaccines prepared for the trial. There has been no published paper or report of this trial, but the Eastern Health Board was aware of it being conducted

Yet a fourth was admitted by GSK in 2011,

and the 1930-35 trials of a Burroughs Wellcome vaccine for diphtheria, carried out on 2,000 children in residential institutions, were uncovered by Michael Dwyer of UCC’s School of History just a month before publication of the report.

It also failed to mention the 1965 trial of a 5-in-1 vaccine carried out on Philip Delaney at Bessborough.

I live by Bessborough. There's a plaque dedicated to the kids buried there at the footbridge toward the Rochestown side of the footbridge. There's been alot of flowers placed in from of it over the weekend.

Cluedo Monopoly

Feisar wrote: »

No interest is a bit strong. The sealing of the records and the why around it is why I’m here. The vaccine trials was something I hadn’t picked up on the radio/tv.

The final report will be published soon. I imagine it will be grim reading similar to Murphy/Ryan/Ferns and the Magdeline Laundry and Industrial School reports. It's a very dark part of the history of this young state and all we can do is do the right thing for the victims and learn from the mistakes.

Beasty

Threads merged

stockshares

stockshares wrote: »

Anyone who wants to know what the Clan Project are campaigning for should listen back to Dr Maeve O Rourke's interview with Sarah McInerney on Rte 1 which finished at 5.30pm today.

The Clan Project is not seeking that Peoples Testimony be made Public .

It is seeking that administrative records be made public so that the whole system and how it was run is known. It does not want a generalised story to be told.

It wants individuals health records be made available to them and that anything that happened to them in the M+B homes be made available to them.

It wants to insure that exactly what happened in the M+B homes is made known and in order to do that they need to ensure that the administration files are made public and not buried.

These admin files will have info relating to payments made and received and vaccine trials etc.

It also wants assurances that when people seek their info from Tuslas Database that it is not redacted.

Tusla have a history of ignoring GDOR rules and giving adopted people redacted files so the Clan Project want to ensure that Tusla will provide complete files to those who seek them.

For anyone who wants to listen to Maeves Interview you can find it below.

She clearly explains why the Clan Project do not want the Commissions Report to be sealed for 30 years.

https://twitter.com/maeveorourke/status/1321196442141315075?s=19

Yellow_Fern

Cluedo Monopoly wrote: »

The final report will be published soon. I imagine it will be grim reading similar to Murphy/Ryan/Ferns and the Magdeline Laundry and Industrial School reports. It's a very dark part of the history of this young state and all we can do is do the right thing for the victims and learn from the mistakes.

The Magdalene Laundry report was more a debunking than a grim report.

TheChizler

stockshares wrote: »

For anyone who wants to listen to Maeves Interview you can find it below.

She clearly explains why the Clan Project do not want the Commissions Report to be sealed for 30 years.

The report isn't being sealed either; once the Minister and AG review it over the next few months it will be published.

political analyst

TheChizler wrote: »

The report isn't being sealed either; once the Minister and AG review it over the next few months it will be published.

The report is being published this Friday.

TheChizler

political analyst wrote: »

The report is being published this Friday.

Thought there was a review stage first, you certain? Even better if not. The point is it's not being sealed for 30 years as many seem to think.

Yellow_Fern

skooterblue2 wrote: »

There was plenty of blame to go around. Girls didnt end up there by themselves you know. It is too simple to say "it was ALL the Orders fault!".

The family put here there and signed her in.
The Order took her in.
The State saw and said nothing.

There was no protection for the girls interests. All parties were taking advantage of girls in a vulnerable positions. The members of the families are long gone, the civil servants are long retired and almost certainly dead. The orders are mostly wrapped up and nearly all the nuns are dead and the ones that are left the youngest are in their 80's. Plus the head of the orders are rotated. Impossible to tease out but it is important to do the best we can to reconcile victims with their past and explain their history.

There is a lot of confusion on these threads. It was not that the state watched and did nothing. Mother and baby homes were publically funded. While the laundries were totally separate and rarely if ever had mothers. Laundries were populated by orphaned girls or petty criminals or similar and girls were often sent there by the courts. It is also clear that there was protection of the women's interests. They clearly received care in many cases.

Cluedo Monopoly wrote: »

Excellent interview. The nuns did try to cover up the vaccine trials but maybe the commission will get more operational data.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-20430889.html

You havent presented any evidence of that.

political analyst

TheChizler wrote: »

Thought there was a review stage first, you certain? Even better if not. The point is it's not being sealed for 30 years as many seem to think.

I assumed that submission of a commission's final report is followed by publication on the same day.

Igotadose

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

There is a lot of confusion on these threads. It was not that the state watched and did nothing. Mother and baby homes were publically funded. While the laundries were totally separate and rarely if ever had mothers. Laundries were populated by orphaned girls or petty criminals or similar and girls were often sent there by the courts. It is also clear that there was protection of the women's interests. They clearly received care in many cases.

Girls parents visited them in laundries. Orphans my hole, they were sent there when their parents couldn't feed them. Or, they were sent there for whatever reasons the parents could come up with.

Protection of women's interests - slave labor, no education. Sure...

seamus

seamus wrote: »

In short, yes.

Tribunals are a process where testimony is taken in terms of witness statements, and at the end the Tribunal produces a report, which is legally a finding of fact. Tribunals are often held in public, and for all intents and purposes a Tribunal is a court case.

This makes tribunals painful because not only do witnesses usually have to be compelled to give evidence, but their evidence is on the public record, and the legal costs to the state are huge.

Commissions of investigation were designed to simplify this process by allowing statements to be gathered without judgement, and the data itself does not have to be published. The Mother and Baby Homes investigation was carried out under a commission, not a tribunal.

In terms of the publication of information, it's all or nothing. The commission cannot produce a report that contains just the names of (e.g.) the nuns in these homes, but not the mothers. Because the commission does not sit in judgement. It is not deciding whether any individuals have committed wrongs, or have been wronged. Thus there is no metric to decide whose name should be in the report, and whose shouldn't; it's all or nothing.

The data gathered by the commission will be sealed for 30 years, as was guaranteed to those who gave testimony to it.

Some people believe that the state should just ignore this guarantee and publish it. But that's a kind of extremist view.

The majority of people I see screaming about this, fundamentally don't understand what it is that's even happening.

The primary point of contention is that the people whose names are in this data, do not have a mechanism by which they can access that data about themselves. For example, this data might include the name of someone's mother or father, who might otherwise not be in possession of it.

On the face of it, European law (GDPR) is pretty clear that these individuals should be permitted access to it. But as these are records for historical, archival purposes, then it can be argued that there is an exemption here. GDPR doesn't permit someone universal access to all data held on them. Certain classes of data are exempt.

Crucially, the data that Tusla is in possession of, is already accessible by people who make a request. However, someone looking for data about themselves elsewhere in the Commission's data, would be making a very big, very painstaking ask. For the most part the only data that would be reasonably retrievable would be the testimony of individuals. Basically people looking for a copy of what they talked to the Commission about. Richard Boyd-Barrett wouldn't get much information from it, since he wouldn't be entitled to a copy of his mother's evidence (if she gave any).

For all intents and purposes, there are primarily two factions at work here:

1. People who want the data made public in order to start witch-hunts against those named within. I, personally, would like to see these individuals brought to justice, but journalists poring over this data searching out names is not justice.

2. Politicial parties seeking to make this appear like the current government is engaged in a cover-up on behalf of the church, and are deliberately spreading misinformation to score points.

One question; are these documents being sealed for the next 30 years starting from now? Or from when the commission first collected the documents (was that 2004?)?

political analyst

political analyst wrote: »

The report is being published this Friday.

the Report is being sent to O'Gorman on Friday, it's up to him to publish it, afaik. Can't see him sitting on it for very long though.

stockshares

seamus wrote: »

In short, yes.

Tribunals are a process where testimony is taken in terms of witness statements, and at the end the Tribunal produces a report, which is legally a finding of fact. Tribunals are often held in public, and for all intents and purposes a Tribunal is a court case.

This makes tribunals painful because not only do witnesses usually have to be compelled to give evidence, but their evidence is on the public record, and the legal costs to the state are huge.

Commissions of investigation were designed to simplify this process by allowing statements to be gathered without judgement, and the data itself does not have to be published. The Mother and Baby Homes investigation was carried out under a commission, not a tribunal.

In terms of the publication of information, it's all or nothing. The commission cannot produce a report that contains just the names of (e.g.) the nuns in these homes, but not the mothers. Because the commission does not sit in judgement. It is not deciding whether any individuals have committed wrongs, or have been wronged. Thus there is no metric to decide whose name should be in the report, and whose shouldn't; it's all or nothing.

The data gathered by the commission will be sealed for 30 years, as was guaranteed to those who gave testimony to it.

Some people believe that the state should just ignore this guarantee and publish it. But that's a kind of extremist view.

The majority of people I see screaming about this, fundamentally don't understand what it is that's even happening.

The primary point of contention is that the people whose names are in this data, do not have a mechanism by which they can access that data about themselves. For example, this data might include the name of someone's mother or father, who might otherwise not be in possession of it.

On the face of it, European law (GDPR) is pretty clear that these individuals should be permitted access to it. But as these are records for historical, archival purposes, then it can be argued that there is an exemption here. GDPR doesn't permit someone universal access to all data held on them. Certain classes of data are exempt.

Crucially, the data that Tusla is in possession of, is already accessible by people who make a request. However, someone looking for data about themselves elsewhere in the Commission's data, would be making a very big, very painstaking ask. For the most part the only data that would be reasonably retrievable would be the testimony of individuals. Basically people looking for a copy of what they talked to the Commission about. Richard Boyd-Barrett wouldn't get much information from it, since he wouldn't be entitled to a copy of his mother's evidence (if she gave any).

For all intents and purposes, there are primarily two factions at work here:

1. People who want the data made public in order to start witch-hunts against those named within. I, personally, would like to see these individuals brought to justice, but journalists poring over this data searching out names is not justice.

2. Politicial parties seeking to make this appear like the current government is engaged in a cover-up on behalf of the church, and are deliberately spreading misinformation to score points.

You are not correct above.

Listen to Maeve O Rourke's interview with Sarah McUnerney for an explainer.

https://twitter.com/maeveorourke/status/1321196442141315075?s=19

Yellow_Fern

Igotadose wrote: »

Girls parents visited them in laundries. Orphans my hole, they were sent there when their parents couldn't feed them. Or, they were sent there for whatever reasons the parents could come up with.

Protection of women's interests - slave labor, no education. Sure...

We have documented routes of entry in nearly half of those involved and plenty are those with lost parents, a lost mother. In one case a girl was admitted to remove her from her abusive father. The idea that the laundries were populated with girls who had sex is a total myth, created by modern misunderstanding and 1950s snobbery. You call it slave labour but the laundries routley lost money and women left by their volition all the time. Less so when they were sentenced by the courts.

440Hertz

And here we go! Defending the indefensible again.

There are countless stories, all of which independently seem to corroborate the fact that these systems were absolutely not normal by any western standards of the 1950s or any other time in the 20th century certainly.

We are still dancing around the edge of how serious what happened here was.

I heard first hand accounts of this stuff from several people at this stage and they’re all horror stories.

We had some kind of bizarre and brutal systems in place and it seems to have been entirely about social control and some kind of weird attempt at turning Ireland into something it never was and never could be.

Between the industrial schools and the laundries we seem to have very badly damaged a significant % of several generations of our own population.

We also coupled our extreme conservative institutions with things like banning contraception well into the modern era. So, naturally enough people got pregnant without any ability manage that, despite the technology being utterly normal almost everywhere else. I remember those debates and they’re not in the dim and distant past, they were in the 1990s. We even had Richard Branson in court defending selling condoms in Virgin Megastore.

We were one seriously screwed up country and not that long ago and just pretending it was normal isn’t going to make it go away.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30982309.html

stockshares

Report might not be available until Nov-Dec
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40071926.html?type=amp&__twitter_impression=true

Quote
The Commission is due to report to the Government this week, but the report will first be sent to the attorney general, An Garda Síochána, and the Director for Public Prosecutions.

It is understood that the report is over 4,000 pages long, so the process of those bodies reporting back their findings is expected to take a number of weeks.

A bill related to the Commission's data was passed in the Dáil last week by 78 votes to 67 and provides for the transfer of a database of 60,000 adoption records compiled by the Commission to Tusla. Other records will be sealed for 30 years under the 2004 Commissions of Investigation Act.
End Quote

The other records mentioned above are what Maeve O Rourke wants to be made available also. These records will contain Admin records of how the M+B homes were run and what took place in them.

The GDPR act of 2018 http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2018/act/7/enacted/en/html
requires these records be made available because they relate to a person's data. The Gov don't want this data available because it will show members of Political Partys, Clergy, Business, Gardai and Medical Professionals in a bad light due to the criminal acts that took place.

1641

A good explainer (for me anyway) in today's IT. Extract here:

"If someone is going to say something in public that threatens someone else’s good name, then that person is entitled to respond if they so wish. They are also entitled to legal representation paid for by the public.
The 2004 Commissions of Investigation Act provided for inquiries that had the power to secure documents (for the purposes of its inquiry) and compel people to give evidence, just like a tribunal.....................
These women were told their identities were going to remain confidential, but their stories would inform the commission’s final report. (Workers in the homes could also volunteer to give evidence, under the same conditions.)
The witnesses were encouraged to speak freely. Claims they may have made about others went unchallenged.
The anonymised nature of the general report that was subsequently passed to the commission by the confidential committee meant the re Haughey ruling was not triggered.
However, recently a difficulty emerged. The commission, under a law that was being rushed through the Oireachtas, would have had no right to redact the documentation it was to hand over to the State when it is finished its work.
An amendment introduced at the suggestion of Senator Michael McDowell last week addressed this problem.
Now the witnesses are to be given a choice: their names can be redacted from the records of their testimony, or not, prior to the records being handed over to the State.
It is worth considering the type of sensitivities that might be involved in the commission’s work. Take, for instance, a woman who had as a girl been the victim of incestuous rape, had given birth in a mother and baby home, and had given, or been pressurised into giving, the child up for adoption.
Suppose this woman had never told her story to anyone, but had decided to give her testimony to the confidential committee, precisely because of the assurance that no one outside the committee room would ever know............
As with public enquiries and a person’s right to their good name, the tracing of a birth parent can raise tensions between conflicting interests.
It is hard to think of a more visceral issue than a person’s right to know who their parents are, or were, and why they were given up for adoption.
But some women who became pregnant in difficult circumstances may have no wish to relinquish a legal assurance they were given decades ago that their identity would always remain secret.
An attempt by former minister for children Katherine Zappone to bring in a new law that would tip the legislative balance between these rights a bit more in favour of the child failed to pass through the Oireachtas during the period of the last (minority) government.
Her successor, Roderic O’Gorman, has committed to making a renewed effort to pass such a Bill.
The records created by the commission will now pass to the State (the digitised record will also go to Tusla) and in time become subject to national archive legislation.
Once again, the law governing when records can be released, and to whom, is not absolute and involves weighing different objectives.
The 2004 law that provided for commissions of investigation stipulated that unpublished records of a commission were to be given to the department that set up the commission, and moved to the national archives after 30 years.
After that time they can become publicly available, save where the law says they should not. The reasons for not releasing a document are specified in the national archives law, and can include because it might cause distress, or lead to an action for defamation.
The 2004 law, and the law on releasing material under the national archives regime, are both subject to more recent law that grants people access to their personal information, but again subject to certain conditions.
Mr O’Gorman is to ask the joint Oireachtas Committee on Children, Disability, Equality and Integration to examine changing the law to allow greater access to the data that lay at the heart of last week’s controversy.
The committee members are going to have to weigh up a matrix of difficult matters before arriving at their recommendations."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/mother-and-baby-homes-dealing-with-sensitive-data-a-difficult-balancing-act-1.4392737

440Hertz

Beyond the technicalities of his legal argument, I think that one thing needs to be made very clear is the victims of this shouldn’t ever feel ashamed. They’re survivors of a strange and abusive system. They collectively spent decades rebuilding their lives, resisting and fighting against often serious institutional power that tried to bury this and that used shame and shunning as a tool of control, yet they have held it to account by making a nation face its own past.

The shame should be attributed to and carried by the state, the institutions and also the society that participated in it.

stockshares

1641 wrote: »

A good explainer (for me anyway) in today's IT. Extract here:

"If someone is going to say something in public that threatens someone else’s good name, then that person is entitled to respond if they so wish. They are also entitled to legal representation paid for by the public.
The 2004 Commissions of Investigation Act provided for inquiries that had the power to secure documents (for the purposes of its inquiry) and compel people to give evidence, just like a tribunal.....................
These women were told their identities were going to remain confidential, but their stories would inform the commission’s final report. (Workers in the homes could also volunteer to give evidence, under the same conditions.)
The witnesses were encouraged to speak freely. Claims they may have made about others went unchallenged.
The anonymised nature of the general report that was subsequently passed to the commission by the confidential committee meant the re Haughey ruling was not triggered.
However, recently a difficulty emerged. The commission, under a law that was being rushed through the Oireachtas, would have had no right to redact the documentation it was to hand over to the State when it is finished its work.
An amendment introduced at the suggestion of Senator Michael McDowell last week addressed this problem.
Now the witnesses are to be given a choice: their names can be redacted from the records of their testimony, or not, prior to the records being handed over to the State.
It is worth considering the type of sensitivities that might be involved in the commission’s work. Take, for instance, a woman who had as a girl been the victim of incestuous rape, had given birth in a mother and baby home, and had given, or been pressurised into giving, the child up for adoption.
Suppose this woman had never told her story to anyone, but had decided to give her testimony to the confidential committee, precisely because of the assurance that no one outside the committee room would ever know............
As with public enquiries and a person’s right to their good name, the tracing of a birth parent can raise tensions between conflicting interests.
It is hard to think of a more visceral issue than a person’s right to know who their parents are, or were, and why they were given up for adoption.
But some women who became pregnant in difficult circumstances may have no wish to relinquish a legal assurance they were given decades ago that their identity would always remain secret.
An attempt by former minister for children Katherine Zappone to bring in a new law that would tip the legislative balance between these rights a bit more in favour of the child failed to pass through the Oireachtas during the period of the last (minority) government.
Her successor, Roderic O’Gorman, has committed to making a renewed effort to pass such a Bill.
The records created by the commission will now pass to the State (the digitised record will also go to Tusla) and in time become subject to national archive legislation.
Once again, the law governing when records can be released, and to whom, is not absolute and involves weighing different objectives.
The 2004 law that provided for commissions of investigation stipulated that unpublished records of a commission were to be given to the department that set up the commission, and moved to the national archives after 30 years.
After that time they can become publicly available, save where the law says they should not. The reasons for not releasing a document are specified in the national archives law, and can include because it might cause distress, or lead to an action for defamation.
The 2004 law, and the law on releasing material under the national archives regime, are both subject to more recent law that grants people access to their personal information, but again subject to certain conditions.
Mr O’Gorman is to ask the joint Oireachtas Committee on Children, Disability, Equality and Integration to examine changing the law to allow greater access to the data that lay at the heart of last week’s controversy.
The committee members are going to have to weigh up a matrix of difficult matters before arriving at their recommendations."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/mother-and-baby-homes-dealing-with-sensitive-data-a-difficult-balancing-act-1.4392737

Colm Keenas arguments which also appeared in a previous article were rebuked by Maeve O Rourke on 6 crucial points in the thread below which she has pinned on her Twitter page.

Keenas previous article was recommended by Micheal Martin and she proved it to be inaccurate. A link to that article is in Michael Martin's tweet below.

https://twitter.com/maeveorourke/status/1320361948429602816?s=19

A big part of Keenas argument is that Testimony given by people to the commission was not challenged and therefore could ruin a person's good name. He never mentioned that Mother's and Children were refused a public inquiry which would have allowed anyone to challenge their testimony.
See tweets below

https://twitter.com/maeveorourke/status/1320361983368175617?s=19

Keena also wasn't bothered to mention the name of the law that takes precedence over the 2004 act. It's the small matter of the GDPR Act 2018 which can be found here
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2018/act/7/enacted/en/html

skooterblue2

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

There is a lot of confusion on these threads. It was not that the state watched and did nothing. Mother and baby homes were publically funded. While the laundries were totally separate and rarely if ever had mothers. Laundries were populated by orphaned girls or petty criminals or similar and girls were often sent there by the courts. It is also clear that there was protection of the women's interests. They clearly received care in many cases.

That is not fully true either. My friend his grandmother spent time there there. Now his great grandfather came back from the first world war married and died soon afterward leaving a widow and orphan. What she didnt know what he was a freemason in a travelling lodge and the local masons in Cork came and offered support and education for the child. She got such a shock she cleared them and then she had no protection from the powers at that time. It was decided to send her to Mother and babies home for sometime. She did get settled afterwards with help from the British Legion.