The Dáil has been told that the recently published Mother and Baby Home report should be repudiated since it is not valid or accurate.

The Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, and the leader of the Labour Party, Alan Kelly, criticised the decision of a member of the commission responsible for the mother and baby home report to discuss it at an Oxford symposium last Wednesday having previously refused to do so before the Oireachtas.

Mr. Kelly said that the commission’s disregarded private testimony of hundreds of survivors meant that the report should be set aside and a new commission established. He described the report as “unfair” and “not fully truthful.” He said it was not acceptable that stories told confidentially by women who had endured such suffering were not taken into account.

Mr Varadkar criticised the commission members for not engaging with mother and baby home survivors or explaining how they came to their conclusions following the report’s publication. He said that the commission’s refusal to discuss its findings with the survivors or the Oireachtas was exacerbated by one of its members’ decision to discuss those findings in an academic seminar.

He said the commission now had no reason not to appear before an Oireachtas committee without delay. Mr Kelly welcomed Mr Varadkar’s comments, saying that they went further than comments previously made by the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin. He strongly agreed that the commission’s members should appear before the Oireachtas.

He said the discussion at the Oxford symposium revealed that the report was fundamentally flawed. Mr. Varadkar replied that if the commission ignored entirely the evidence of the women, that would be a serious problem that, in his view, would call into question the report’s validity.

The work of former Irish Examiner journalist Conall Ó Fátharta was highlighted in the Dáil, with Mr Kelly saying that his questions were unanswered.