Patsy McGarry’s article in the Irish Times today is really problematic. 1) There was real substance to the last fortnight’s campaign. We have established that govt policy around survivors’ access to personal data is incompatible with EU law.

2) Academic, campaigner and survivor critique of government-produced history is not dangerous or abusive. It is a necessary activity in any democratic society and an important corrective to the narrow methods employed by govt inquiries.

3) Many Irish people may well think the Ryan Commission is the gold standard in terms of inquiries into past historical abuse. It isn’t now, even if it ever was. It was been overtaken by innovations in Australia, Canada, Scotland.

4) In particular, it is right to amplify survivors’ accounts of the Commission’s and the subsequent Redress Board’s exclusionary processes, and to point out the persistence of those problems in the operation of later commissions.

5) We don’t measure the validity of a government inquiry’s conclusions in the length of the report. Truth doesn’t come by the pound. 4,000 pages? So it’s a long report but that’s as far as it goes.

6) The McAleese and Walsh/Harding-Clarke reports are also important comparators here. If we are going to tell the story of production of official history then let’s not leave out the less impressive efforts.

7) The summary of the GDPR/2004 Act’s interactions is just wrong. On which see @Tupp_Ed

8) It simply isn’t the case that the Commission guaranteed all participants that i) Their transcripts would be sealed for 30 years and ii) their own records would be withheld from them. That’s not what confidentiality means.

9) The Commission denied a public hearing to those who asked for it - we know this from people like Philomena Lee and Noelle Brown. Not everyone wants secrecy.

10) Patsy is right that religious orders and other interests have effectively used law to prevent disclosure of certain kinds of information in historical inquiries’ reports. But that is not a justification for sealing survivors’ own personal data.

10) Those episodes show us only that perpetrators and their successor organisations, at least in the 2000s, held disproportionate power to control the truth-telling agenda, and govt did nothing to remedy that.

11) Survivors who have wanted to speak about their experiences at the Commission have been made to understand that they are subject to a legislative gagging order and that legislation has never been amended.

12) It is a nonsense to suggest that the Gardaí have been willing and available to act on information provided by survivors. See eg Elizabeth Coppin’s case before UNCAT.

13) And on natural mothers’ interests in preserving secrecy, @cmcgettrick has repeatedly tackled these arguments. Not all natural mothers want existing forms of secrecy maintained in law and adopted people’s identity rights are very strong, for a reason.

14) I have no doubt that some people keep secrets because they are ashamed. Lots of us know how that feels. That shame was produced and reinforced by state action. The state can’t unthinkingly rely on that shame now to suit itself.

15) I think all of us want the Commn to produce a good report. But participation and transparency are key standards here and survivors have already shown that those standards were not met.

16) And for God’s sake, stop patronising survivor campaigners - some of the strongest wisest men and women you could ever meet.