"I Expect There Will Be Some Form of Enquiry'- Quinn on Tuam Baby Scandal

By Eimear Phelan
Irish Independent
June 9, 2014

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/i-expect-there-will-be-some-form-of-enquiry-quinn-on-tuam-baby-scandal-30339350.html

The bad manners displayed by some teachers towards Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn at the teachers' conferences didn't do them any favours

On RTE’s Morning Ireland Education Minister Quinn claimed that many of the headlines about the Tuam babies were “simply untrue”.

“The sensationalism and the way it has been reported is different to the facets that are known,” he said.

The Minister said that the case is not as is being reported around the world and “some of the headlines that went around the world were quite horrendous and gave a very mistaken impression of what really happened.”

This incident “is not the same as the abuse that was done in the residential institutions” he clarified said we have to remember that the mother and baby homes have “been know about and written about for quite some time.”

He urged people to remember that “these things have to be looked at in the context of their time” and to remember the shame and stigma associated with being a single, unwed mother in Ireland in the past.

The enquiry was needed according to Quinn to “tell this generation of Irish people what previous generation of Irish people did to young women who got into trouble, so to speak”.

He was very careful to say that the enquiry would have to be handled delicately to give “some form of closure” to the people involved.

”Lets find out what the facts are first before we set the terms of reference for any public enquiry in my view, insofar as we can get the facts,” he cautioned.

He also advocated building some type of “memorial” for the 800 babies