Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Another week and another group of wronged people are seeking justice from the State. We seem to be making a habit of it.

It is almost part of the State's culture, one of a lesser-loved tradition we have, except today there is no fanfare, there are no pen portraits to help us to identify with the victims and there is no media live-tweeting and hanging on to every word, eager to be the first to report it to the masses. Today, there are just the victims and survivors listening in so, in practice, we have to ensure that what they see is not more stalling or waiting.

The suffering and trauma of survivors was not confined to their time in residence, with "residence" being such a gentle, refined and reassuring word for what they experienced as institutionalisation, incarceration and, frequently, all-out savagery, nor was their suffering and trauma confined to their lives. It is fair to say that in all probability every family where someone was deposited in a residential institution there is trauma today of one kind or another. It may be hidden, it may be manifest or have been attended to by earlier generations but it is certainly there in the psychological inheritance. I think of the people who took to the drink, took to the bed or were what was known to be "suffering with their nerves", which was the phrase I remember hearing whispered when I was growing up. What was their history? What happened in their families? What burden were they carrying from a parent or grandparent? We have to be very clear every time we speak on this issue that the sheer extent of the trauma, often intergenerational, is acknowledged and not just the intensity but the length of that trauma. We must acknowledge trauma's ability to survive the survivors and pass on to new generations.

This is why the actual survivors must have access to specialist trauma-informed therapy and psychotherapy- the real deal. The idea that a few sessions of counselling, God help us, might be sufficient would add insult to the grievous previous injury. Counselling has its place for sure but the dismantling of a life, the pulverisation of spirit and the bruising of the soul requires psychotherapy, which is, in its definition, attending to and treating their spirit and their soul. It is not every day we get to address such issues in legislation. They are the things that go to the very essence of what it means to be a human and to exist. When we do, we have to get it right in as far as we are able to. If we do not, we compound the wrong. We pass it on to our children and to their children and the next generation of politicians to address this Dáil some day.

Our survivors must have access to specialist therapy and not financial or geographical ifs or buts. I will whizz through part of a wish list that is a needs-list for survivors. Survivors need a professional advocacy service; access to the contributory State pension and priority for social housing. The once-off payment of €3,000 for former residents living overseas, particularly in Britain, is insufficient and as Teachta Clarke has outlined, could affect any means-tested income. Not so long ago we were reminded that €3,000 was only lunch money to the big beasts of RTÉ, yet it is proposed as a decent settlement for survivors. Any payment must be index-linked to the cost of living and there must be additional payments to survivors who have complex health needs. All of this must be done on a case-by-case basis because there is no such thing as a generic survivor. Everyone survives differently, if they survive at all, which is why we must also in our work address those who did not survive or who were lost at the time or lost later. Their experience must not be forgotten and their experience must never be whitewashed. When it comes to treating our survivors as they should be treated, we have a way to go with this Bill just as we have a way to go as a society, State and nation.

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