Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the hardships faced by those born in Bethany Home. There is no doubt they faced hardships. Up to the 1950s, poverty and the diseases associated with poverty were widespread in Ireland. Infant mortality rates were high. Children were not cherished the way they are today and were often seen as a burden or a form of cheap labour. There was no provision for legal adoption. Life was tough for many, not least if a child was without the support of a family.

Many of those who were born in Bethany Home only spent a short time there. I acknowledge clearly the contribution of Deputy McLellan in this regard. It bears out what we found in our analysis. Sometimes those born in the home were there less than a month before being fostered out. Others spent longer there but the indications are that infants could not be kept there once they reached the age of four or five years.

Bethany Home closed down in 1972. As a result of the lapse of time there are few if any comprehensive first-hand accounts of the home. However, in its day it must have been a well-known charity particularly to the readers of The Irish Times, which carried notices of its annual meetings and gift days.

I have been able to establish that it appears some time before 1922 the Dublin Midnight Mission and Female Refuge, founded in 1898 or earlier, merged with another charity, the Dublin Prison Gate Mission, which was established in 1876 by a Quaker woman to assist women recently released from prison. By 1922 the merged charity was known as the Bethany Home and was based in Blackhall Place in Dublin, not in Rathgar as put forward incorrectly in the Sinn Féin motion. It was 1934 before Bethany Home moved into premises in Orwell Road, Rathgar, Dublin. It remained there until it ceased operation in 1972 and the home was put up for sale. The indications are that it was run as a charitable trust established by trust deed. It would also appear that the trustees were predominantly people from a Protestant background but not necessarily with any formal link to a particular denomination. It was run by a management committee on a voluntary basis.

A court affidavit, dated 20 January 1940, by an honorary secretary of the Bethany Home stated that it was well known to the public that all the members of the managing committee were and always had been Protestants. However, the affidavit confirmed that up to 1939 the home accepted all women including Catholic clients. There was no element of sectarianism. All those resident were, however, expected to participate in evening prayers of a Protestant ethos. In 1945 the Department of Justice was informed that all Protestant sects were represented on the committee of management in Bethany Home. In 1938 the home had six full-time staff including a nurse and midwife.

The role of Bethany Home reflected the aspirations of the founding charities and was mainly for distressed women from the least well off sections of society. It was not limited to a single purpose. However, the High Court found in a civil case in 1940, referring to Bethany Home's annual report, that 73 out of 79 cases helped were maternity, that is, fully 90% of its work. Department of Health records confirm that in the 1930s, Bethany Home was registered as a maternity home and was inspected under the Maternity Homes Act 1934. Records for 1952 show that after the three main maternity hospitals, Bethany Home was the largest registered maternity home in Dublin by bed size. The 1938 inspection records indicate that in addition to being a maternity home it was also a children's home for those up to three years. It is reasonable to presume that for most of its operation in this State it was primarily a mother-and-baby home.

Other work the home engaged in included taking in unmarried mothers and their babies. In line with the purpose of one of the two original charities, women before the criminal courts were on occasion to reside in Bethany Home for a specific period rather than go to prison and it is likely that the home assisted women on release from prison.

The only formal link with the criminal justice system was the fact that Bethany Home was registered as a place of detention or remand centre under section 108 of the Children Act 1908 on 17 April 1945 for offending female non-Catholic children and young persons under 17 years of age. For the purposes of Part V of the Children Act 1908, committals to Bethany Home were either court-ordered remands, which would have been for some days while awaiting a court date, or court-ordered detentions, following conviction for short periods not exceeding one month.

There have been no complaints as to the criminal justice work of the Bethany Home.

The number of children who died at Bethany Home is quite shocking and it is a point, together with the unmarked grave in Mount Jerome graveyard, that strikes one about the history attached to all this. It is both sad and quite distressing. Unfortunately, poverty and disease were commonplace in Ireland up to the 1950s and this was reflected in infant mortality rates. Infant mortality rates in the 1940s were at a level that is hard to comprehend today, that is, approximately 20 times higher than at present and this figure applies across the entire population. For those who were malnourished and subject to disease and a lack of hygiene, the figures could have been even higher.

It was public knowledge at the time that there was a serious problem with standards in maternity homes. During the Seanad debate on the Registration of Maternity Homes Bill that took place on 11 April 1934, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health stated:

it is a well-known fact that in some of our large cities there are maternity homes of a very poor class which are availed of largely by unmarried mothers. We are not at all satisfied that those homes are properly managed. As a matter of fact, we have information to the contrary in the report published in 1927 on the relief of the sick and destitute poor. The Commission drew attention to different evils which they traced to the poor-class maternity homes, or to the not too scrupulous management of those homes, particularly the connivance of the management at the secret disposal of children to unsuitable foster parents, and the consequent high death rate amongst the children.

While Deputy Ellis also quoted this speech, I believe it makes the Government's case, rather than that of the Opposition, but again, when looking back, this is quite shocking. The Registration of Maternity Homes Act 1934 was considered an advance on the pre-existing position. Registered homes were required to have a qualified nurse or midwife and to keep records on births, deaths and the removal of children and the addresses to which they were removed and they were subject to annual inspection. However, infant mortality rates remained high and poverty widespread.

Neither the number of infant deaths in Bethany nor the conditions there were a secret. It was not an enclosed institution and members of the public had access to the home on a regular basis. Newspaper archives indicate there were sales of work, Bethany gift days and an annual public general meeting. All deaths would have been recorded and included in the inspection reports. Death certificates would have been required and a coroner's inquest could have been held, where appropriate. There does not appear to be any question of the infant mortality rate being hidden and this is known from the evidence from Mount Jerome.

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