IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Conall Ó Fátharta and Niall Murray
The terms of reference for the mother-and-baby home inquiry will be published following the first Cabinet meeting in the new year.
A spokesperson for Children’s Minister Dr James Reilly said to allow the “requisite space for debate” on the issue, the terms of reference, which had been promised before the Christmas recess, would now be brought to Cabinet for agreement on January 8. A Dáil debate on the inquiry would take place the following week.
Dr Reilly has been meeting with advocacy groups in recent weeks and says he is “confident” the inquiry will be as “inclusive as possible” and have the support of “those most centrally involved”.
A number of the groups have warned that the inquiry needs to be as wide as possible to achieve any degree of support and must look at issues like forced and illegal adoptions, the Magdalene Laundries and the vaccine trials.
Earlier this year, the Adoption Authority admitted for the first time that potentially thousands of people had been illegally adopted here. The claim directly contradicted former children’s minister and now Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald’s statement in the Dáil last year that every adoption carried out by the State was legal.
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