Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Many words and images come to mind when thinking about these institutions. I think of images of cold, thick walls, bars on windows, the smell of bleach and words such as cruelty, sadness, terror, poverty, unhappiness, regret, hunger, brutality, abuse, despair, beatings, imprisonment and silence.

It is now three years since Justice for Magdalenes circulated an apology and redress scheme for survivors. It is 22 months since the Irish Human Rights Commission stated that a statutory inquiry into alleged abuses and provision of redress should begin immediately. It is 15 months since the UN Committee Against Torture detailed that the State should ensure that survivors should obtain redress within one year, but the Government continues to delay in providing all Magdalene victims with redress and, more important, with an apology. The long delay is unacceptable but it is made worse when one considers that survivors of the laundries are elderly and suffering ill health as a result of their forced incarceration and some survivors have been refused pension entitlements by the Department of Social Protection.

Tonight as we discuss this motion we must remember also the survivors of another brutal Christian residential institution who were also failed by the State. The women and children who survived shocking abuse in the Bethany Home are also elderly and they have fought bravely and courageously for an independent inquiry to examine what happened in this residential home, which was open from 1921 to 1972. Earlier this year, when the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Bill was debated, I strongly argued that separate redress boards should be created for both the Magdalene laundries women and Bethany Home survivors. However, the Minister, Deputy Quinn, refused probably because of the financial cost to the State and also because the Bethany Home was a privately owned mother and baby institution. This does not mean that the State was not complicit; it failed these women and children.

Between 1922 and 1949, more than 220 children died in the Bethany Home and 219 were buried in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery. I pass their plot very regularly and cannot understand why this Government will not open an inquiry into how our State failed these defenceless children. That place is a bleak spot with no flowers or markers, no large headstone nor any evidence of the babies and children who passed so quickly through this life. There are no daisies nor anything else there; it is just a patch of ground. I attended the cemetery plot recently in the company of some survivors and the Minister of State, Deputy Joe Costello. I made the point that we have compounded the hurt of these survivors by not including them in redress.

I am reminded of what the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, said when in opposition. At that time she called on the Government to, "do the decent thing and end this outrage." These sentiments were supported by her now Cabinet colleagues. Now these same Members are in a position to do in their own words, "the decent thing", but they are sitting on their hands and refusing to honour their promises to the elderly survivors of this institution.

The list of horrendous abuse in the Bethany Home is long and disturbing, yet we must not shy away from this black episode in the State's history. In October 1939, following an inspection of the Bethany Home it was found that 14 infants had died since the last inspection of the premises and a total of 57 children were living in the home at the time. In the same year, a report from an inspector in Monaghan on children who were boarded out from the Bethany Home found that the children were insufficiently clad, unwashed for weeks and that one sick and neglected child had not had a nappy changed for weeks. Yet the State refused to act. It suppressed the truth and simply ordered the home to stop admitting Catholics. There is evidence that one child died there every three weeks between 1935 and 1940. I ask if we can now do the decent thing but I have not heard any answers from the benches opposite. We need to do the decent thing and step up to the plate for these women. Certainly tonight we need to apologise on behalf of the State and we need to bring redress to these elderly people who suffered in these homes.

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