It saddens me to say that in Ireland in 2021, we are still forgetting many people with disabilities who are treated appallingly by State and society. 

Reading the report, as a mother with a physical disability and as a sister of a man with an intellectual disability, it gives me unsettling insight into how our disability institutions were formed and how loose labelling of people as “unsuitable” or “unadoptable” set the tone for stigma, discrimination, and institutionalisation which still exist today.

The report details that no submissions were made to the commission by individuals or groups on the issue of disability or mental illness in the homes, so the voice of those affected residents has not been heard. 

There are parallels to society today in this regard because people with disabilities are often excluded in many facets of society, in big and small ways. 

In chapter 31 of the report, the records on disability are only from Pelletstown and Bessborough homes. 

We have fragments of the story.

Children with disabilities were placed in the mother and baby homes because there was nowhere else for them to go. 

For example, 65% of the children with intellectual disabilities in Pelletstown were born to married parents, when we so often hear that homes were places for unmarried mothers and "illegitimate" babies. 

This shows us how mother and baby homes began to morph into institutions for children with disabilities. We still have those institutions today. 

There are between 2,000 and 3,000 people living in residential congregated settings throughout the country in 2021, despite the existence of a national policy, to move people from these residential services into the community, called 'A Time to Move On from Congregated Settings.' 

Many people with intellectual disabilities are living in residential services because “there is no alternative place available” at present. 

Those exact words “no alternative place available” were used in several cases in the commission report. 

It was not a good enough reason for the inappropriate placement of children or mothers in the period covered by the commission and it certainly is not an acceptable reason for anyone to live in an institution today.

Young people are in nursing homes, people with intellectual disabilities are in large residential facilities or mental health institutions when they do not need to be. It makes me shudder.

Parents with disabilities continue to have children removed from their care as was done in the mother and baby homes. 

In the 1950s, there is evidence that it was decided to “dispense with consent” when a mother had an intellectual disability and so the child was adopted. 

Today, mothers are not locked in mother and baby homes, they are in our community, but the same issues of lack of consent, lack of information, and no identity that existed in the time of the mother and baby homes persist. 

According to the final report of the Child Care Law Reporting Project, by Carol Coulter, published in November 2015, the leading reason for seeking court order applications to take children into care was the disability of a parent. 

Some 15% of all applications between 2012 and 2015 were initiated due to the disability of a parent, the next most common reason was neglect. 

We have no specialised services for parents with disabilities who in many cases could care very well for their children with some support. We are failing these families now.

Ireland ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities in 2018. As State and society, we agreed to look at disability through the lens of human rights rather than charitable and paternalist care of the past. 

We must ensure that the labelling of people with disabilities stops. We must implement the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. 

We must support people to make their own decisions by implementing and using the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2015 and dispensing with the archaic language of lunatics that existed in legislation until very recently. 

We must ensure that people with disabilities are supported to live independently in our community. We must ensure that parents with disabilities have specialised support to flourish in family life. 

Only when all these measures are in place will we truly be able to commit the mistreatment of mothers and children with disabilities to history and look to the future with hope.