IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Conall Ó Fátharta
Irish Examiner Reporter
Former children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald has admitted she read a dossier in 2011 calling for an inquiry into mother-and-baby homes, vaccine trials and illegal adoptions.
Ms Fitzgerald is coming under pressure to explain why she failed to act on the issue during her three years in office.
The 131-page dossier prepared by the Adoption Rights Alliance (ARA) called for a statutory inquiry into the homes, vaccine trials carried out in them and the scale of forced and illegal adoptions arranged in such institutions.
“During their time in the mother-and-baby homes, these women and girls were treated in a sub-human fashion, often denied adequate medical care or pain relief while giving birth. The women were also forced to carry out tough manual labour, whether they were pregnant or not. After their time was up (sometimes before) their babies were taken from them and sent for adoption, sometimes to America,” said the report.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.