Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:accepts that Bethany Home, Rathgar (1922 – 1972) was a maternity home, a children’s home 1959 and a place of detention for women on remand or convicted of crimes referred by the courts;

further accepts that Bethany Home was subject to inspection under the Registration of Maternity Homes Act 1934;

recognises the State’s failure to vindicate the rights of sick and dying Bethany children after receiving reports of neglect by the Deputy Chief Medical Advisor;

acknowledges that 219 Bethany Home children died between 1922 and 1949, and these same children currently lie in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin;

further acknowledges Department of Local Government and Public Health inspector and media reports detailing the very serious neglect of Bethany children in the home and of children sent to nurse mothers;

considers most serious the exclusion of the surviving men and women of Bethany Home from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme, which provided for fair and reasonable awards to persons who, as children, were abused while resident in other institutions subject to State regulation or inspection; and

commits to a Dáil debate by mid-February 2014 as a first step in the delivery of a State apology, redress mechanism and access to personal records for the small number of surviving men and women of Bethany Home.

The reasons set out by the Government for denying justice to the Bethany survivors are as mealy-mouthed as those of the last Administration. In July, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, and the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, jointly wrote to the Bethany Home Survivors Group. After two and half years spent considering redress for Bethany survivors, the Minister and Minister of State arrived at the same conclusion as the last Government, namely, survivors were not entitled to redress because, according to them, Bethany operated as a mother and baby home. This Government, like the last, does not want to address any issue surrounding mother and baby homes.

Bethany was not just a mother and baby home and the Government's attempt to rewrite history does not stand up to scrutiny. Bethany was a Protestant maternity home and a children's home from which children - young, vulnerable citizens of this State – were fostered in and out of neglectful homes. It was also a place of detention for women on remand or convicted of crimes. Evidence in the public domain and records held by Departments tell us this, yet the Minister of State will table an amendment to the Sinn Féin motion that is beyond a distortion of the truth. She has underpinned her amendment with an argument set out in the same vein as that used by the State's deputy chief medical adviser in the 1930s. He was of the view that children born outside of marriage were prone to starvation and, judging by the amendment before us, it appears the Government shares this view.

It is outrageous that the Minister of State would suggest that the State had no duty of care to children in the institutions inspected by it. It is scandalous that the Government would attempt to disregard the significant mortality rate in Bethany, the deaths of young children and babies in a State-inspected institution, in such a cavalier fashion.

The children were poor, as the Minister of State's amendment points out. Of that there is no doubt. However, the 219 souls who lie in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery did not die of poverty. The children buried there were two years of age and under. They were babies. The small number of survivors of Bethany Home tell a tale of poverty, but that is simply the backdrop to their stories of neglect, cruelty and suffering. We will hear some survivor testimony this evening.

The State was aware of these children's existence and the neglect and cruelty meted out to them. The State on which these defenceless children relied to vindicate their rights and for protection turned a blind eye to their suffering. Today, the Minister of State and her Government is dismissing them once again. That is an unimaginably cruel thing to do. It is also dishonest. It is a lie to say that Bethany Home was a private institution in which the State had no interest. This is a very familiar lie. It was repeated time out of number as the State sought to dodge its responsibilities and distance itself from the Magdalen laundries. The State inspected Bethany Home under the Registration of Maternity Homes Act 1934. Minutes of the Bethany Home management committee refer to the first inspection, which happened in 1936. Between 1935 and 1944, 132 Bethany children died, averaging 14 children every year. A State inspection report dated 30 November 1938 noted a previous inspection in November 1937 and stated that, of the 57 children in the home since the last inspection, 14 had died. Those children died as the State authorities looked on.

In 1939, the State's Deputy Chief Medical Officer visited Bethany and attributed the ill health of children - rickets, scalding and purulent conjunctivitis - in the home to the fact that they were "illegitimate" and, therefore, "delicate" and prone to starvation. Are the Minister of State and the Government supporting that view in 2013?

In 1945, Bethany Home was designated as a place of detention for Protestant women on the nomination of the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin at the invitation of the then Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland of Fianna Fáil. As with the Magdalen laundries, women were sent to Bethany by the courts for a variety of crimes, including petty crime, concealment of birth and infanticide. Bethany was also a place for detaining prisoners on remand. The last media report of such a case was as late as 1965.

The reality is the State had a multitude of reasons for oversight of the institution.

However, it chose to turn its back on these children and their mothers, just as it did to the children who were battered and abused in industrial schools and to the enslaved women and girls of the Magdalen laundries. From 1949 the State made direct payments to Bethany Home in the form of the maternity and child welfare grant. The State's fingerprints were all over this institution, as the Minister of State well knows.

Children were temporarily fostered from Bethany Home, and reports held in the then Department of Local Government and by public health inspectors graphically set out the often barbaric neglect of these children. The Minister of State is aware of this too. In fact, the State actively sought to minimise instances of horrific neglect and to protect the perpetrators. That is the evidence. When reviewing one inspector's draft report regarding the neglect of a Bethany child in foster care, the State's deputy chief medical adviser crossed out the word "dying" and replaced it with the term "low". The same original report includes a request that the dispensary doctor "order" the child's removal to the county home, but again the medical adviser for the State instructs this to be omitted. In addition, another section in the draft is crossed out, with an instruction to omit a piece which reads:

I was informed by the sergeant of the Civic Guard [the Garda] that they had received unfavourable reports of foster mother before, and that another child from Bethany Home died within one month of being sent to her. I consider that the authorities of Bethany Home were culpable to send child in the condition of health out to nurse.

The State was acutely aware of the suffering of children in these foster homes but nothing was done to protect them.

The Bethany survivors have been consistently frustrated in their efforts to gain recognition of their suffering and the failure of the State to protect them. The Fianna Fáil-led Government excluded them from the State redress scheme. Many, including Labour Party and Fine Gael Deputies, were outraged by this decision at the time. In 2010, the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, was so incensed at the mistreatment of survivors that she described the continued refusal of the Fianna Fáil Government to include former residents of Bethany Home under the provisions of the residential institutions redress scheme as "a running sore". Deputy Lynch went on to add: "As a result, the survivors have been deprived of the opportunity of having their case heard and of obtaining some justice and redress for the abuse they suffered as young, innocent and vulnerable children."

The Government cannot credibly discuss children's rights or survivors' rights today if it refuses even to acknowledge the State's failure to protect children in the past. The State failed the children of Bethany Home. The Government knows and understands this. Both parties made the same case when they sat on this side of the House. Mother and baby homes were included in the residential institutions redress scheme. Bethany Home was subject to State inspections, as were the foster mothers who cared for the Bethany children when they were fostered. Indeed, the State paid for those children's care in some instances. Barbaric neglect was recorded by the State, even if it was doctored and amended. The State was aware of very high numbers of children dying in the home. The courts detained women in Bethany.

Bethany survivors were excluded from the residential institutions redress scheme on a false pretext. As I said, mother and baby homes were added to that scheme. The involvement of the State in respect of these institutions is proven and documented and cannot be contested. These are the facts, and no amount of mealy-mouthed words will change them.

I and the survivors were rather stunned last summer when the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, sent their missive to the survivors via their solicitor. They dismissed out of hand any hope or prospect of a fair hearing, recognition, justice, an apology or redress for those people. I thought that was a new low, until today when I saw the amendment that has been tabled by the Government to the fair and fact-based motion tabled by my party on behalf of the survivors. There is no recognition in it of the suffering the Minister of State knows these children and babies endured. There is not even a proper recognition of the reality of the unmarked graves in Mount Jerome cemetery. Will the Minister of State explain why that is the case? In the face of overwhelming evidence of State involvement, State inspection and State subvention and the overwhelming evidence of suffering not only from survivor testimony but also from the records in official State documents, why does the Government continue to frustrate the legitimate claims of these survivors for simple truth and justice?

I do not know if the Minister of State can explain that this evening, but I suspect she cannot. As people who took such a keen interest in this case and who told survivors they would stand by them in their journey for justice, I cannot understand how the Minister of State and the Government can so callously turn their backs on them now. The decision in the summer was devastating for the survivors. They had hoped that a Government that had finally come out on the right side with regard to the Magdalen laundries would be able to be honest and fair and to give justice to this small group of survivors. The amendment puts paid to those hopes. I do not know how the Minister of State, with a shred of decency or honesty, can defend this amendment-----

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