IRELAND
Irish Times
Ciarán D’Arcy
Independent Alliance minister John Halligan has compared child mortality rates in mother and baby homes to Nazi concentration camps.
The Waterford TD also said religious orders found guilty of criminal neglect should have their assets seized.
The Minister of State for Training and Skills said elderly nuns who worked in the homes should be interviewed as part of expected criminal investigations to be conducted by gardaí.
“Old age should not diminish accountability for any crime or alleged crime. If you bear in mind that the child mortality rate at Bessborough in 1943 was approaching 70 per cent, sure that’s similar to concentration camps,” he said.
“Are we seriously saying that because somebody is ill or aged that we shouldn’t at least interview them? If you look at what’s happened at Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau, even up to last year individuals who are alleged to have carried out horrendous crimes in their 80s and 90s were interviewed.”
Mr Halligan was speaking to RTÉ Radio on Saturday in the wake of confirmation last week from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission that “significant quantities” of human remains found at a mother and baby home in Tuam run by the Bon Secours Sisters belonged to young infants.
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