Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I may have caused some confusion in my contribution. The institution in this case had a Magdalen laundry run by sisters, but the person to whom I refer was in one of the residential institutions. The Magdalen scheme is separate.

On the substantive point, having passed a Bill in July 2012 in which the State acknowledged its obligation to the victims of institutional abuse and the need to provide services for them such as education, health, counselling and so on and the board having been set up in March this year, after all that time we are still talking about staffing and administrative problems and there is, in fact, no scheme for the victims. The Minister himself described it as one of the darkest, most shameful chapters in the history of the State. He has acknowledged that many of the people involved are elderly. If the scheme is to mean anything, they need support now. I have described one person's situation, but I suspect there are many more. A total of 15,000 may be eligible for the scheme and after all this time and given the tragic circumstances of their lives, we are still talking about administrative problems. They want the scheme to be opened. The Minister should be here to tell the House when it will be open for applications. What Eithne and others in the same position would like is a commitment that when it is opened, any support they need will be backdated to when they first sought it. Eithne is now starting her course. She is dependent on social welfare payments and has a daughter to support. As she suffers from dyslexia, she needs a computer and other things to help her to proceed with this course. She does not have them because she does not have the support that she was promised by the Government and the State. I ask the Minister of State to give a specific timeline for when applications will be accepted and indicate whether they will be backdated to provide support for these survivors of abuse and to whom the State has acknowledged it has an obligation.

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