Mother and Baby Home Survivors excluded from decision making, councillor says

Dublin City Council will consider an emergency motion from Social Democrats councillor Noelle Brown at this evening’s meeting about the planned Centre for Research and Remembrance.

Browne has expressed concern over the continued exclusion of survivors from key planning and governance structures related to the Centre for Research and Remembrance, to be developed on the site of the former Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street.

The Centre is intended to serve as a specialist archive, research centre, and repository of records related to institutional trauma in the 20th century.

Following Government approval in July 2023, planning permission was granted to the Office of Public Works (OPW) in February 2025 by Dublin City Council, with acknowledgements made that, in “recognising the sensitivity of the work, it would be progressed in conjunction with survivors.”

According to Brown, this has not been the case.

“Despite repeated requests from survivors and advocates, affected individuals have been excluded from the planning and development stage of the Centre, including the formation of legal and archive committees,” she sai.d

“These committees’ functions are ‘to sensitively create an archival repository of survivors’ personal records’. To proceed without survivors at the heart of this process is to risk repeating the very harm this Centre claims to address.”

The Social Democrats councillor said “survivors of Church-run institutions have experienced decades of systematic exclusion from legislation, redress schemes, Commissions of Investigation, and even from access to their own personal histories.”

“They have had their lived experiences dismissed and are now being denied informational self-determination at a crucial moment.”

“How can the history of a marginalised community be recorded without the inclusion and respect for those whose lives are being documented?”

Catriona Crowe, former Head of Special Projects at the National Archives, said, “it is essential that there be survivor representation at every level of the project to create the Centre for Research and Remembrance.”

“Indeed, it is astonishing that this has not happened already, in line with best practices in other jurisdictions such as England and Wales, Australia, and Northern Ireland.”

“I urge the immediate appointment of survivor representatives to the planning, design and governance of a project which centrally concerns them.””

If passed, the motion will mandate Dublin City Council to write to Ambassador Martin Fraser, who is providing strategic oversight of the Centre, and to the Office of Public Works.

The motion calls for “the urgent appointment of survivor representatives to all decision-making bodies, and for ongoing, meaningful, and sustained survivor consultation at all stages of the Centre’s development.”

This cannot be another chapter of silence imposed on those whose voices were ignored for so long,” Brown added.