A DELEGATION of Irish academics and human rights campaigners will travel to Brussels tomorrow to lobby for an all-Ireland remit for the forthcoming commission of investigation into mother and baby homes.
At scheduled meetings with EU Commission officials and MEPs, the group will also urge that the inquiry investigate Protestant-run institutions and county homes.
James Reilly, the minister for children and youth affairs, is due to announce the commission’s terms of reference after the Dail returns from the summer recess next week.
Delegation members regard the Brussels trip as a pre-emptive strike after government statements during the summer hinted that the terms of reference will be restrictive.
The commission, chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy, was set up following the revelation last May that 796 babies may have been buried between 1925 and 1969 at a former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway run by the Bon Secours nuns.
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The delegation includes Maeve O’Rourke, a lawyer who successfully brought the Magdalene laundries case to the UN Committee Against Torture, and Toni Maguire, an archaeologist and anthropologist who discovered up to 11,000 unmarked graves in Milltown Cemetery in Belfast.
Sean Lucey, a healthcare historian at Queen’s University Belfast, is also part of the delegation.
The groups represented are the Adoption Rights Alliance, Bethany Survivors Group, Irish First Mothers, and the Adoption Loss Natural Parents Association.
The delegation is being hosted by Martina Anderson, a Sinn Fein MEP for Northern Ireland.
“We’re flagging that the government’s terms of reference for the commission of inquiry are probably going to be way too narrow,” said Susan Lohan of the Adoption Rights Alliance. “It’s about creating awareness in the EU and some bad publicity for the government before they publish the terms. We’ve made several overtures during the summer to James Reilly for a meeting and he has not even acknowledged our correspondence.”
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Lohan said there had been frequent cross-border movements of children from institutions in the republic, such as the Protestant-run Westbank children’s home in Greystones, Co Wicklow, to Northern Ireland.
“We’re pursuing the idea that this is a 32-counties issue,” she said. “There were unofficial movements of children across the border and neither government paid any notice to it.”
Niall Meehan of Bethany Survivors said: “We hope to push the Irish government into including Protestant homes, not just Bethany, in the inquiry.”
The delegates will have a round-table meeting with MEPs on Tuesday and are also due to meet members of the EU parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee.