Conscience

With an election looming, the question remains...

Photo by Joe Shields on Unsplash

Now we know with the general election looming over us on November 29th — everywhere we walk, drive and turn, telephone poles & lampposts are coated in election posters, all with some slogan to sway voters in their favour.

Below is a video, a Dáil debate - from October 2nd between Holly Cairns and Roderic O’Gorman (and a question from Claire Kerrane in the beginning). First, when the camera zooms out. Look how few attendees there actually are in the entire chamber. There are very few. But take note of what O’Gorman says in his responses to Cairns.

NOTE: The above video is a screen recording from my phone of the broadcast from the Oireachtas TV archive.

Image: Larry Cummins, Irish Examiner

Boy, is there a story behind this photo. As I walk down the street returning home from college, I'm handed an election flyer by a man for the local Green Party candidate Monica Oikeh, not realising I just locked eyes with the man responsible for everything about mother and baby homes, Roderic O'Gorman.

I take it and walk on, trying to process who I'd just had a brief encounter with and as I'm talking to a friend [who's an adoptee and mother and baby homes survivor], she says "I hope you spoke to him!" & I hadn't. I was initially flustered because I had so much I wanted to say and wasn't sure if I'd sound brash or harsh.

But then I turned around and legged it back towards the street, hoping he was still there. Luckily enough, he was. He went into the shop (the one we're standing outside in the photo), and I started gathering my scattered thoughts. I set my phone to record the exchange so I didn't forget one detail.

I get his attention and next thing, I'm surrounded by him and ten other people as Roderic listens to me interrogate him about his work with mother and baby homes (something that I am quite critical about) - I kept eye contact with R O'G for a solid five minutes before he excused himself to continue canvassing but my heart was in my throat the whole time!

So, without realising, there were photographers snapping photos & journalists taking notes.

You can hear what was said below. I think it’s important that people hear what was said. You’ll notice that there is a lot mirrored between what O’Gorman had said to me versus what he said in the Dáil.

But you see, there were some interesting things that O’Gorman said that caught my attention. Let me break it down for you.

“[…] I visited the Bessborough site twice with survivor groups […] about a year ago.”

~ Roderic O’Gorman

There are two main groups. One I’m affiliated with (Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group), and the other one doesn’t want anything to do with me & had blocked me on social media because they disagreed with my view (below).

The group I’m replying to in the tweet above are the only group that Minister O’Gorman has engaged with — he has not done so with the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Support Group. Carmel Cantwell, one of the main figures in that group who has been very vocal on social media was never contacted by O’Gorman anyone from Minister O’Gormans office.

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“The scheme has had a lower take up rate, than we were expecting.”

~ Roderic O’Gorman

There’s a slight problem here, one of the ways you typically get the word out about the scheme (or anything) for that matter, is by advertising - right? There has been a lack of advertisement across the board. As I was walking to college one morning, I spotted this on a wall — this is the only physical advert, that was not on social media that I had seen so far. If you’re wondering where this was, it was on the corner of a bus station. Mum has said that she has heard about the scheme on the radio, but I’ve not heard it yet.

Another contributing factor would be the length of time it is taking for the applicants who are in their 80s and 90s to receive their redress. For some, they’ve gone to the media to share their story — only then had it prompted the department to prioritise them & to finally fulfil the application. I’ve also seen in groups on Facebook in particular where information is not adding up, from what applicants are being told versus the records that they have. They didn’t even make the waiver they would have to eventually sign public either (it was only public after I got it in an FOI request).

Not to mention the mixed emotions from eligible survivors, feeling torn over whether to even take it or not.

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O’Gorman continues by saying that there was a genealogy expert introduced to help with tracing. Except, there’s one thing wrong with that.

My friend, Breda had been on the waiting list for a DNA expert to help her understand her results and had been waiting for a number of months. When she phoned Tusla to complain about the lack of contact after she’d been allocated a tracing officer, the team leader contacted her. She was the person who informed Breda that the DNA expert was no longer employed by Tusla. It was confirmed a couple of weeks later that the Adoption Authority of Ireland [AAI], the lawyers for the DCEDIY (Roderic O’Gorman’s department) & the National Advisor for Tusla, who had demanded that DNA tracing be stopped immediately. The DNA expert was available to the AAI but had refused to use or promote his work to anyone who contacted them previously.

As she found out from them, if the person you want traced through Tusla was not born in the Republic of Ireland, then that is not possible under Tusla’s tracing remit. (Which is already quite limited)

So — until she got in touch with Tusla who informed her that the DNA expert had been scrapped — no one had told her, and chances are not many (if any) others who were put on this list know either.

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To conclude, from the Dáil video or from my exchange with Roderic O’Gorman — I suppose I find it difficult to comprehend that they would allow the many injustices to weigh on their collective conscience, to prohibit proper justice being served for anyone connected to a mother and baby institution & their families.

No one should have to be like me, hoping they manage to bump into an official on the street, subsequently interrogating him to try and get what they should already be entitled to.

The question remains — will this government and their elected officials (or any successive government for that matter) ever put their foot down to truly make change and will do survivors justice? I’m not holding my breath.