Please Note: This conference is taking place online via zoom. The zoom link will be emailed in advance of the conference to those who have registered to attend. Some recordings will be available after the event.

Conference Schedule: Thursday 18 November

9.30am – 10.00am: Welcome and Introduction

• Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, President, NUI Galway

• Dr Barry Houlihan, Archivist at NUI Galway, conference organiser

• Dr Maeve O'Rourke, Lecturer, Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, NUI Galway, conference organiser

10.00am - 11.15am: Roundtable 1: Truth-Telling and Networks of Records

• Kirsten Wright and Dr Cate O'Neill, Find & Connect Project Team Members, University of Melbourne

• Dr Katherine O'Donnell, Principal Investigator, Magdalene Oral History Project; Associate Professor, University College Dublin School of Philosophy

• Claire McGettrick, Co-founder, Adoption Rights Alliance, Justice for Magdalenes Research, CLANN: Ireland's Unmarried Mothers and their Children: Gathering the Data; Irish Research Council doctoral scholar, University College Dublin School of Sociology

• Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley, Co-Principal Investigator, Tuam Oral History Project; Lecturer, Discipline of History, NUI Galway

Chair: Conall Ó'Fátharta, Lecturer in Journalism, NUI Galway

11.15am - 11.30am: Break

11.30am - 12.45pm: Keynote Lecture: Dagmar Hovestädt, Head of Communication and Research for the Stasi Records Archive in the Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv):

Title: “An archive as a tool of transitional justice. Origins, work, organisation and effects of the Stasi Records Archive.”

12.45pm - 1.45pm: Roundtable 2: Lived Expertise and Survivor Perspectives

• Mary Harney, BA, MA, LLM, Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, NUI Galway doctoral scholar

• Noelle Brown, Actor/Writer/Director

• Rosemary C. Adaser, BA (Hons), MSc/Dip, Founder and former CEO of The Association of Mixed-Race Irish (AMRI)

Chair: Professor Daniel Carey, Director of the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies, NUI Galway

1.45pm - 2.45pm: Lunch Break

2.45pm - 3.45pm: Keynote Lecture: Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, University of Oxford.

Title: "Archives, Libraries, and the Social Importance of the Preservation of Knowledge".

3.45pm - 4.00pm: Break

4.00pm – 5.15pm: Roundtable 3: Truth-Telling and Transition: Justice, Reparation, Memorialisation

• Raymond Frogner, Head of Archives, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, University of Manitoba

• Dr Anita Ferrara, Lecturer, Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, NUI Galway

• Dr James M. Smith, Associate Professor, Department of English, Boston College

• Catriona Crowe, Former Head of Special Projects, National Archives of Ireland

Chair: Dr. John Cunningham, Lecturer in History, NUI Galway, co-PI, Tuam Oral History Project

5.15pm - 6pm: Elizabeth Coppin in conversation about her ongoing ongoing action before the United Nations Committee Against Torture, Coppin v Ireland

Conference Overview

This one-day conference will examine key current issues regarding the ethical, legal and proper professional management of records and archives concerning the institutionalisation and separation of individuals and families in Ireland. Its aim is to facilitate greater public awareness and discussion of the relevance of access to and preservation of documentary records, testimony and other evidence to truth-telling and transitional justice; the gaps in legislation and policy at present; and human rights-based models of records management and archiving practice (both international and in Ireland) that might be emulated or drawn upon by civil society and policymakers.

Recent events have continued to highlight the need for sustained and critical evaluation of how truth-telling processes operate in Ireland, and how their activities and alternative practices might contribute to long-term and survivor-focused forms of justice, reparation and memorialisation. Such recent events include:

• the rejection by survivors and other interested stakeholders of the government's Retention of Records Bill 2019 (which proposed to 'seal' all records gathered and created by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse for at least 75 years), followed by the continuing secrecy of that archive;
• the holding of the archive of state records concerning Magdalene Laundries by the Department of the Taoiseach 'for safe keeping' and not for the purposes of freedom of information;
• the government's stated policy to 'seal' for at least 30 years all contents of the archive gathered and created by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation (MBHCOI) (save that data subject access requests are to a certain extent being accepted at present);
• the manner in which testimony was gathered by the MBHCOI (survivors not having an automatic right to be heard by the Investigation Committee and the 550 testimonies offered to the Confidential Committee being discounted as evidence for the purpose of the Commission's overall findings) and the denial of survivors' access to any documentation created or gathered by the MBHCOI (including a transcript of one's own evidence and other forms of personal data);
• the continuing policy of adoption-related data controllers not to release mixed personal data to adopted people;
• the Taoiseach's commitment on behalf of the government in October 2020, echoed in the government's plan for responding to the MBHCOI Report, to establish a national archive and centre of education and memorialisation regarding 20th Century institutional abuses; and
• the recent recommendations by an independent Truth Recovery Design Panel to the Northern Ireland Executive, following six months' in-depth consultation with survivors and relatives, for a truth-telling and archiving framework concerning Northern Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby institutions and Workhouses and their related practices including cross-border practices.