The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes experienced “heavy pushback” from religious orders and was separately threatened with legal action at one stage, one of the members of the Commission has said.
Ms Daly, who spoke publicly for the first time on Wednesday about the commission’s work at an online event organised by Oxford University, said it was “not a wise idea” to run the confidential committee report alongside the inquisitorial part of the commission.She said that at one stage there was a threat of legal action against the commission during the course of its work and that it had to be “ultra-careful”.
The final report said that of the 978 children who died there, 80 per cent were less than a year old and 67 per cent did not live past six months. “Now, apart from the idea that a cash strapped local authority would have constructed something like that in the 1930s...They had the nerve to send that back to us.”
“So the point I’m trying to make is that everything that went into the main report really had to stand up to cross-examination. At one stage there was a looming threat of judicial...of us been brought to court, it didn’t happen, but this is the level we’re on.” She said the only Government departments that are “not guilty of gross neglect in terms of archives are the Taoiseach’s department, the Attorney General and Foreign Affairs”.