Ms Mary Lou O'Kennedy:

It is not for me to interpret the will of those who designed the scheme, but I can refer to some references made in the proposals to the residential institutions redress scheme and the Magdalen laundries scheme. The latter scheme, in particular, used duration of stay and commercial work undertaken without payment as key criteria in assessing the claims. Those same criteria appear to be used in this scheme, so it appears the harms acknowledged are those for which precedent exists in previous schemes. That is my interpretation of why they are referenced in the proposals. For this to be a human rights-based and survivor-centred approach, which the Department was committed to ensuring, it would need to look at the specific harm inflicted on this group of survivors, which is different from the harms inflicted on Magdalen laundry survivors.