MEMBERS OF COMMISSIONS of Investigation will be compelled to appear before the Oireachtas under proposed legislation due to be debated in the Dáil today.

The Bill, which is being put forward by Sinn Féin TD Kathleen Funchion, would compel COI members to attend a relevant Joint Oireachtas Committee and answer questions about their work.

Under the proposed legislation, former members of commissions could be compelled to appear before a committee within six months of the publication of their final report.

Funchion, Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on children and the chair of the Oireachtas Children’s Committee, said the legislation “has been a long time coming”.

There was much anger in 2021 among survivors and politicians when the members of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (COIMBH) refused to appear before the Children’s Committee.

Many survivors were critical of the COIMBH’s final report, in particular findings which stated there was a lack of evidence regarding forced adoption, abuse and discrimination – despite testimonies contradicting this.

On foot of the criticism, members of the Commission were invited to appear before the Children’s Committee to discuss their work. However, they were not legally required to attend and declined the invitations.

Funchion said she felt “compelled to act” after the Commission members “angered survivors and the public, who rightly perceived a complete lack of accountability”.

‘Burned into my memory’

The Carlow-Kilkenny TD said the Commission’s findings contradicted some of the testimony given by survivors.

She told The Journal: “I learned first-hand from talking to survivors about the horrific situations they endured essentially at the hands of the State. People put so much hope into the Commission.”

When the final report was published, many survivors were bitterly disappointed. Funchion said the day she got the report is “burned into my memory”.

We sat down and read it. What survivors had told us and what was written in the report, I thought ‘those two things don’t match up’. There were a lot of contradictions in it.

Funchion said the Children’s Committee wanted to ask the commissioners ‘Can you explain this to us? What is the rationale?’

In 2021 the COIMBH chairperson Yvonne Murphy and her fellow commissioners defended the report, saying it needed to be read in its entirety.

Some survivors of mother and baby institutions said their testimonies were amended or misrepresented in the final report and a number of women took a test case against the State.

In December 2021, the State acknowledged that survivors’ rights were breached when they were not given a draft of the final report prior to its publication.

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‘Legal loophole’

Details of the report were leaked to a newspaper days before its official publication. A subsequent Government review failed to identify the source of the leak.

Funchion said this leak, and the “legal loophole” which meant the commissioners didn’t have to appear before the Oireachtas committee, breached the public’s trust.

“We cannot in good conscience allow this level of unaccountability to ever be repeated again, nor can we stand over it.”

Funchion said she is “acutely aware” that commissions must remain independent, but added that a level of scrutiny is currently “lacking”.

Her office has been working on drafting the proposed legislation for over two years.

Funchion called on the Government to back the legislation, saying greater accountability and scrutiny would give the public “more confidence” in any future commissions.