It is an outrage that planning permission would be given on this site where over 900 children, that we know of, died but where only 64 graves have ever been found. It has happened despite all the campaigning of survivors and the groups connected with them. I will mention something the Minister for justice said here the other day when this was raised with him. He basically acted like the Government was powerless and that it was terrible altogether. He used the words "... the Government cannot interfere in respect of planning applications" but of course it can. The Government could object to the application via a Minister, for example. Has it done that? As well as that, this is just part of a pattern of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two parties that were in power for the hundred years when all this happened, allowing the church off the hook because they do not want the history of their role in all this examined. That is the conclusion we have to draw. As for the idea the Government is powerless, it was in here passing emergency laws for the hauliers over the past couple of nights and it could have passed emergency laws on this. That land should never have been allowed to be sold by that congregation. The Government should have made sure of that. Which congregation was it? It was the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. As of last year the congregation is involved in ongoing discussion with the Government regarding financial contributions to a redress scheme for survivors with reports indicating they have resisted demands for payment on the grounds they did not act in an untoward manner. This is despite the fact there was an 80% death rate in some of the years of the home’s existence. Obviously it was not like that in all the years. The congregation was asked for €96.5 million. They have assets of €37 million. I am rounding the figures up. They have almost €2 million in cash in the bank. The nuns sold this site in 2021 and they pocketed €6.85 million. That is the Government’s fault. That never should have happened. Fianna Fáil let them away with murder on this since the 1990s and it could have intervened to put a law into effect so no congregation could sell any site where there were potentially graves. This is an outrage. The Clann Project has pointed out the Government is legally bound by the European Court of Human Rights to find any bodies that exist and bring them back in a suitable manner for the families of those affected. Bessborough was a site of systemic oppression, and the Government has made sure that that has not actually happened. In the letter the Clann Project pointed out that planning permission was refused a number of times, so the Government knew this was going to happen eventually. I would say the Government is happy to have this built over, so it is another chapter finished for it. The Clann Project also pointed out that under the European legislation investigating deaths of children, mothers ascertaining the whereabouts of the disappeared and returning the remains to relatives is part of the State’s human rights obligations which it has not complied with. I was not in the Dáil when the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes came out but I remember reading that and thinking "Here we go again, another whitewash". That report should not be cited. It should have been voted down by the Government because so much of it was so mild in its manner towards the people running the homes. It did not use all reasonable means to search for the disappeared children, so let us put that one away. Some of those means would be geophysical surveys, radar, electrical resistivity and magnetometry. I will finish by saying the Special Advocate for Survivors has called for the Government to stop. That is someone the Government appointed. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are trying to bury the truth here and they are happy a private developer is putting this out of the way for them.

Sentiment score: -0.06