Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore will next week introduce the Social Democrats\u2019 D\u00e1il motion which seeks to extend the timeframe of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission by one year.<\/p>\n
The D\u00e1il motion was submitted in response to the revelation that 550 recorded testimonies of mother and baby homes\u2019 survivors were destroyed by the Commission.<\/p>\n
The Commission is due to wind up at the end of this month. However, there have been calls for this to be extended until questions surrounding this incident are answered.<\/p>\n
Deputy Whitmore, who is the party\u2019s spokesperson for Children, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother traumatic turn in a difficult journey towards seeking truth and justice has fallen onto survivors of mother and baby homes after they discovered that their audio testimonies have been destroyed by the Commission. There has been no explanation as to why this was the case, how this was done and if any testimonies are salvageable \u2013 or whether the Government has a role to play here.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome survivors have made complaints to the Office of the Data Protection Commission about this, as well as to garda\u00ed. However, the Commission itself has refused requests by the Children\u2019s Committee, of which I am a member, to answer our questions surrounding the destruction of this material.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the Minister did attend a Committee session this week, he failed to provide any further clarity and indicated that the Government was seeking legal advice from the Attorney General.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe in the Social Democrats have a real concern that there is no legal basis for what the Commission has done here. We have written to the Office of the Data Protection Commission seeking an investigation into the circumstances surrounding this and the legality of such destruction under Article 6 and 9 of the GDPR legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cPending all the questioning and potential investigations into this act, we are calling for an extension to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission. There are concerns that if it does wind down, investigations cannot be fully carried out and questions will remain unanswered as a result.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur D\u00e1il motion is a call to buy more time for survivors in their search for truth and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
February 19, 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore will next week introduce the Social Democrats\u2019 D\u00e1il motion which seeks to extend the timeframe of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission by one year. The D\u00e1il motion was submitted in response to the revelation that 550 recorded testimonies of mother and baby homes\u2019 survivors were destroyed by the Commission. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jennifer-whitmore","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n