Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman said he will seek an investigation into how sensitive details in the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission were leaked into the public domain.
In a tweet published on Sunday afternoon, Mr O’Gorman said he will now be raising the matter with Government colleagues.
I am deeply angered to see sensitive details of the Commission Report leaked in a newspaper this morning. It is completely unacceptable that the people affected by the Report have found out elements of the Report in this way.
— Roderic O’Gorman TD (@rodericogorman) January 10, 2021
On Sunday Mr O’Gorman contacted the secretary general of the Department of An Taoiseach, Martin Fraser, to request an investigation be held into the leak. A report in The Irish Times says Mr O’Gorman will bring the matter up with Government colleagues at this week’s Cabinet meeting.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald described the leaking of the report as “grossly insensitive” and “unacceptable”.
She said the lives of those who lived in the homes were “marked and marred” by their experience and the information contained in the report should not have been released before survivors were briefed on its contents.
Formal State apology
Taoiseach Micheál Martin is to make a formal State apology to survivors of the mother and baby homes in the Dáil on Wednesday. It will follow the publication of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation Report, which is understood to say that 9,000 infants died in those institutions after 1922.
A spokesman for the Taoiseach confirmed that the final report of the commission will be presented to survivors on Tuesday.
The report has also stated the status of “illegitimacy” until 1987 was an “egregious breach of human rights”.
The spokesman said it was more likely the apology would be delivered the following day, Wednesday, when the Dáil resumes after its Christmas break.
On Tuesday, the Cabinet will discuss the report and is expected to discuss a number of urgent actions which it will take.
These include the immediate prioritisation of the Adoption and Tracing Bill which allows adopted children gain access to information about their birth mothers.
The Taoiseach, who has read the report, said he found its contents shocking and difficult to read.
The experience faced by mothers and infants in those circumstances was “extraordinarily sad and cruel”, he told The Sunday Independent.
The report found that infant mortality in these institutions was twice as high as for the same types of children in wider society.
