IRELAND
Irish Examiner
Friday, March 10, 2017 Elaine Loughlin
The Government is looking at methods of justice used in post-apartheid South Africa and after Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile to address the mother and baby home scandal here.
Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has confirmed she is looking at introducing a “transitional justice” system here as a way of dealing with the victims and relatives of those who were sent to institutions.
This could include a truth commission as used in South Africa from 1996, or, as suggested by Ms Zappone in the Dáil, could be based on the Museums of Memory in Argentina and Chile.
Ms Zappone also confirmed she will publish the interim report into mother and baby homes by the end of this month. It comes after numerous calls in the Dáil to make public the commission’s second interim report which has been with the minister since September.
During Dáil statements on the scandal of the Tuam mother and baby home, Ms Zappone said she acknowledged the calls for an expansion of the terms of reference to cover all institutions, agencies and individuals involved with unmarried women and their children. She promised to announce the detail of a scoping exercise to see if all institutions could be included in the inquiry in the coming weeks: “What happened in Tuam is part of a larger picture.”
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