Ms Mary Lou O'Kennedy:

Again, I will not answer this query from my personal perspective regarding whether such an endeavour might be a mistake. In the context of whether what is being proposed will meet the needs expressed by the survivors and address the harms they identified, it does not reflect those. The proposal does not reflect the harms particular to this group of survivors. This is a different group of people and they have had very different experiences from other groups of survivors of the Magdalen laundries or the residential institutions. This group of people has a different set of needs and a different set of harms to be addressed, and, therefore, this proposal does not reflect what the survivors told us were their experiences. There is a mismatch in this regard.

Additionally, when the Chair asked about health, there was an issue that was of concern for survivors living overseas. Significant numbers of these survivors live abroad. They asked that they be given access to health services overseas as well, at the equivalent level to that to be provided to survivors in Ireland. Sometimes, again, the solution to this request was seen to be covering the costs of those survivors' private health insurance overseas, because that would be the only way in which any sense of equivalency could be provided to them. This was another major concern expressed.