TDs have approved a controversial bill that sends a database created by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission to Tusla, which is raising concerns about accessibility.
It’s passed a controversial bill by 78 votes to 67, with all but two non-Government TDs opposed.
KCLR News has contacted all of Carlow & Kilkenny’s TDs on this issue this morning. Just two of the five appear to have voted, Sinn Fein’s Kathleen Funchion against & Jennifer Murnane O’Connor of Fianna Fail for. Her party colleague John McGuinness, Fine Gael’s John Paul Phelan & Malcolm Noonan of the Green Party are not mentioned in the voting lists (see below).
Deputy Noonan says he was in the Seanad as minister with responsibility for electoral reform so his vote was paired. He’s not in a position to discuss it further this morning.
While Deputy John Paul Phelan says he was also absent as someone with a recently acquired underlying condition he was told by his doctors to avoid places with high Covid 19 infection rates.
The Government’s been criticised for not opening the records to survivors.
Children’s Minister Roderick O’Gorman said the aim was to preserve the work of the commission to aid in the tracing of relatives.
But Dr Maeve O’Rourke, lecturer in human rights at Maynooth University, says many survivors of the homes just don’t have faith in Tusla to do that noting “Those people say that they feel discriminated against, patronised, infantilised by the practices that Tusla operates in relation to adoption information, so it’s quite clear, they’ve publicly stated, that they consider that they need the consent of a third party to disclose to an adopted person their first name, their name at birth, they consider that’s third party information”.
Here’s how the TDs voted:
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