Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. There are 21 sections and 4 Parts. There has been no regulatory impact analysis and no explanation has been given for that. It faced pre-legislative scrutiny. A detailed report was carried out, which gave a detailed background and had ten key recommendations in addition to other recommendations. I understand all ten have been completely ignored. The Minister of State made a speech in which he spoke about the importance of listening to survivors, which we should all do, but acting on what we heard has gone by the board.

I have taken a particular interest in this topic for many reasons, both professional and personal, since the day I was elected. I am not given to despair, but it is extremely difficult to watch each Bill and each scheme perpetuate the abuse for the survivors. We have here a scheme ostensibly to finish or complete Caranua - new friend - which I am on record as saying was anything but a new friend, but was the old enemy, an sean-namhaid, in disguise. Now, we abuse the language to call it a new friend. That Caranua finished accepting standard applications back in December 2020. Here we are, almost four years later, putting through legislation to wind up Caranua, which stopped providing payments back on 11 December 2020 and ceased as an operational entity on 24 March. It received 6,181 applications and made more than 57,000 support payments. I mention that because a huge element of this Bill proposes to deal with Caranua. I am told that people are still waiting for their cases to be finished. The Minister of State might tell me today, because I only know of one that has been highlighted to me. Are other people and applicants still in that position? That Caranua, which I will come back to later, was to me maladministered; I use that word. Prior to that, we had the Magdalen scheme, which was maladministered. Those words were used in 2017 by the Ombudsman, Mr. Peter Tyndall, who called his report Opportunity Lost: An Investigation by the Ombudsman into the Administration of the Magdalen Restorative Justice Scheme. He stated, "I therefore find that the manner in which the Scheme was administered by the Department constitutes maladministration." There are two pages in which he goes through it all, pointing out which parts were maladministered. One would imagine we would learn from that. We had the McAleese report, where the truth was dragged out in the end that the State was absolutely involved by its non-action. Indeed, there was no supervision, and clothes were actually being sent to be washed from the various State organisations and so on. Then, this scheme was set up and had to have Mr. Justice Quirke tell us how to do it properly and how to be inclusive, which was all ignored, of course. He talked about such measures as the special medical card - not the enhanced medical card, but the Health (Amendment) Act card - that was given to people with haemophilia. He asked for that as one of the things to be given. Mr. Peter Tyndall's report is worth reading.

Let us look then at what led us here, a quarter of a century after the former Taoiseach apologised to us, saying that the people and young children in these institutions were not to blame. We look at that and see what has happened since then. I will make a quick comment on the redress board that was set up following that apology. At the same time, the Ryan investigation, which became known as the Ryan report, was set up in parallel with the redress board. That redress board accepted applications from residents of 139 reformatories, industrial schools and other relevant institutions. The Minister of State should listen to those figures. This was a country of incarceration, but for poor people and those without power. That functioned up until 2011, received an extension of time, and 15,579 people applied. In this new scheme we are doing now, we are making it a condition precedent that people had to have to come before the board or get a ward of court, otherwise they cannot avail of the limited supports for some people provided in the Bill. Can you imagine that we now have another divisive scheme that excludes people all over again? We spent a century doing that in the reformatory and industrial schools, mother and baby homes and all the institutions and now we copperfasten it in each scheme we bring in.

There was one good example that came directly from the Department of Education, which I will come back to, which seems to have gotten good praise but which we have completely ignored. With regard to this scheme, does the Minister know what we did with survivors? I have to declare a conflict of interest because I was there in a previous life, and if I disclose anything with regard to the clients I was with, I will still be committing an offence. More importantly and more relevantly, if the people who went before the redress board declared what they got, they would be committing an offence. They were sworn to secrecy. I am not sure whether the Ceann Comhairle is aware of this, but this is what happened. This is the legislation that was brought in. They had gagging orders; they could not talk about their direct experience of that. I was part of that. I earned money from that. I went along as a professional. People talked about being retraumatised by the cross-examination. The talked about the retraumatisation of the religious orders' males and females writing letters that were read out to that redress board. Nobody was present, but the letter assumed great importance because it came from the religious organisations. Fast forward to the mother and baby homes and again, the same type of importance was being put on the evidence from professionals and religious organisations while the survivors received the wording "contaminated" evidence. This is where all this started. That legislation is still intact. We were, in fact, retraumatising people and attempting to re-criminalise them because, let us remember, some people had been committed by court for doing nothing other than being poor. That is what happened. That was that redress scheme. Now, we are building that into this legislation to say people had to apply to that in the first place before they can do this. Sometimes, I am lost for words with this because I wonder at what stage we will learn.

The Stardust inquiry lately brought into acute focus for me the absolute class distinction in this country that is never talked about. What happened with the Stardust victims would not have happened with any other group that did not live in that area. Similarly, the thousands who went through our industrial schools are being retraumatised at every step of the way. We have a mother and baby home that is referred to in the documents I have read and the Magdalen scheme as examples that justify what we are doing here. Therefore, we are not going to give people the Health (Amendment) Act health card, which gives admission to more services. We are doing what we did with the Magdalen scheme and what we did with the mother and baby homes scheme that is in the process of being rolled out. People will say that it is completely discriminatory and that it is utterly wrong. Why are we now doing the exact same thing that we know is wrong? I really would like the Minister of State, as the new Minister, to leave his script at the end of this and try to address the issue. I do not wish to be confrontational or argumentative. I am too tired for it, actually. I despair that we keep doing the same bad things in the guise of the patriarchal and patronising system that tells people, "This is good for you when we know very well it is bad for you". Who are we talking about here? There is any amount of research that tells us that survivors are poorer, doing less well and experiencing intergenerational trauma. Of course, this scheme will not help the families of survivors. It is not going to help the children or grandchildren, even though the trauma is intergenerational.

Other schemes did, and I referred directly to the educational finance board, which seems to have got great praise from the survivors. It is directly run by the Department of Education, and when praise is due, it is due. It responded to the needs of the survivors who came forward, and that is in their words. What do we do with that? We ignore the good example and follow all the bad examples.

Just in case that anyone thinks I am given to exaggeration, let me look at the Ryan report on the industrial and reformatory schools. It refers to "a fundamentally flawed system of inspection". It stated that the Department of Education's "deferential and submissive attitude" towards the religious congregations compromised its ability to fulfil its statutory duty of inspection. It also referred to "systemic use of 'corporal punishment'", and how a "climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most institutions and all those run for boys". It stated that there was "endemic sexual abuse in boys' institutions and predatory sexual abuse against girls". Sexual abuse was endemic in boys' institutions; it was not systemic for girls but girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse by male employees, visitors and in outside placements, and so on. This was a system completely out of control, run by the abusers, unmonitored and unsupervised by the Government. Hence, the redress board was set up, and then we gagged it, stopped them and retraumatised them, and we are still doing it.

Then we look at the pre-legislative scrutiny. There were, as I said, ten key recommendations, and every single one of them was ignored. I have a little time, so I am going to go through them. It said that legislation should apply to all survivors, regardless of whether they received an award or a settlement. That was not accepted. It will only provide for those two situations, which many of us have mentioned. Recommendation No. 2 said that all survivors who receive a Health (Amendment) Act, HAA card. It was not accepted by the Minister.

Survivors of institutions living abroad who spent time in Magdalen institutions and received a payment under the redress should be eligible. This was not accepted. "The proposed €3,000 once-off payment... is insufficient". This was ignored. Another recommendation said the Department of Education should liaise with the UK's Department of Work and Pensions to ensure that anyone who does get that small amount should not have their entitlements affected. That was left open and I think there will be some negotiation. It was not quite rejected but not quite accepted because the last line said that England will do what England will do. Legislation should ensure that survivors are not reinstitutionalised and, therefore, HAA cards should provide for home nursing and home care services. This was not included.

Educational supports should be for survivors and their families. This was not accepted. It was recommended that the legislation "should provide for the establishment of a professional Advocacy Service as a Statutory Body". This was not accepted. It was recommended that the interdepartmental Government committee should be reconvened "as an urgent priority". This was not accepted. Provision for a State pension for all survivors was not accepted.

I have gone through the whole lot. None of them was accepted. That lovely speech from the Minister who said we must listen and learn has once again turned language on its head. It is that we must listen and ignore; we will continue on with the divisive, discriminatory policy; and we will treat them as "them", out there somewhere and nothing to do with us, like the Governments that allowed this to happen.

I am here today and I am repeating - and I hate repetition - that I just cannot believe what continues to happen. At what stage will the females in government and its three parties actually come in and speak up for women, as well as the men of course? I saw one Government backbencher come in between yesterday and today. Where are they? How can one single female TD or Minister stand over the fact that we are going to exclude thousands of people from the mother and baby homes scheme because they spent less than six months in one? Tongue in cheek, I said to Deputy Sherlock with his new baby that he wasted six months of his life caring for that baby because according to the policy of the Minister and the Government, he does not need to look after a baby at all. He can let it scream for six months. It does not affect them at all. They are a tabula rasa. They hear nothing and they do nothing. That is the mother and baby homes scheme.

The religious orders were let off the hook completely in 2002 by the then Minister, Michael Woods, who settled for €128 million and gave an indemnity. Some of that money was then used for the Department of Education, which did very well in giving out grants. The next thing was Caranua, with €105 million. I sat on the Committee of Public Accounts and I watched with despair when the CEO of Caranua came before us. I will not mention names here. I watched with despair and disgust the manner in which survivors were referred to by that paid official. I saw more chairs of that board going through a revolving door. I saw more agency staff being brought in with very little training. After a few months they were gone, and they were assigned as key workers to the survivors who came before us. I wondered what was happening, where this money was and what was happening with it. I realised that €128 million - a drop in the ocean - was given in 2002, and then the religious orders were struck not by guilt but by the forcefulness of the Ryan report in 2009. They voluntarily came forward with a bit more.

Every scheme that we bring in is ad hocand reactionary with regard to the sum of money coming forward and available from the religious orders. Once again, I am not here to castigate religious orders but I am here to castigate what they did in the institutions throughout this country. Yes, they should be responsible and they should pay. Just yesterday, I asked for an update from the Minister on the negotiations regarding what money the 18 religious orders are now going to give. He does not know because it is confidential. It was to be done in six months but an extension of time was given. Absolute kid gloves, respect and dignity are being given to this process to negotiate with the religious orders that were in charge of all of this abuse. Maybe that it is what we have learned; that we should treat people with respect but we are doing the complete opposite with survivors. We are treating them with utter disrespect, and we are looking down on them in the same manner that we have done for the whole century-and-a-half history of institutionalisation.

The Minister of State should forgive me if I am hot under the collar regarding this scheme, and if the Government had any sense, it would simply stop this. It set up a consultative forum and a consultation process, and it had people do research to tell us how vulnerable residents were on an intergenerational basis. Then the Government ignored it all and left us with no choice but to say, "I cannot support this". This is appalling legislation in the guise of saying that we are now helping them again but we will help only that small group that was in a group of institutions that previously applied to a redress board which they found traumatic, or went to the court and found it equally traumatic, and we will ignore all the others, such as the children who were boarded out from the mother and baby homes, the children who spent less than six months in them, and all the other institutions that have been recognised. For God's sake, please. For God's sake, at what stage will we learn?

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