Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take this opportunity read into the record the testimony of Derek Leinster, a survivor of Bethany Home. It states:

My mother became pregnant and as my father was a Catholic and my mother being a Protestant, that meant they could not marry. My mother's parents sent her to Bethany Home, she was sent there 4 months before I was born and was there until 4½ months after I was born. She had served her punishment for having a child out of wedlock. That was the Protestants way of dealing with a girl getting pregnant.

At 7½ months old I was nursed out to Mrs. Shirley, my head was a mass of puss, blood and scabs. I looked like a ghost. They nursed me back to normal health. I was then taken back to Bethany when I was 2½ years old, to be permanently adopted by another family - that did not happen.

There were many children in the Bethany Home who suffered from Rickets. The most common cause of rickets is a lack of vitamin D or calcium in a child's diet. And the 219 dead children buried in Mount Jerome, says it all.

I then became very ill and was lucky that they had left enough time to give Cork St Isolation Hospital a chance to save my life. I had Bronchial Pneumonia, Diphtheria, Pertussis and Gastroenteritis. I survived that. I then went back to Bethany Home and was illegally adopted to a dysfunctional family in Co. Wicklow. I grew up in total poverty; in rags and starvation - to the degree that I had to go into fields at night and take potatoes just to stay alive.

I have suffered all my life with effects from Bethany Home, and now I have Cancer of the Blood due to neglect and lack of care. I left for the UK at 18 years of age unable to read or write. The Bethany Home as a Maternity & Children's Home came under the 1934 ACT and the 1908 Children's Act. It was also a Detention Centre for people under the age of 17 and a Detention Centre for adults, these came under the Justice ACT.

The Bethany Home also nursed out children and the government paid them 15/2 a week per child for that. Bethany Home wasn't excluded because it did not qualify - They just excluded it because it was a small minority Protestant Home, which they never believed that one day we would be able to find out the truth.

You see, my mother was forced to abandon me she had no other option back then but then my new parents - the State - made the decision to abandon me. Contained in the Irish Constitution it says - Cherish the Children of the Nation Equally, well I am asking today that the state treat us the survivors from the Bethany Home equally.

We want the following:1. We want to be treated as Irish Citizens

2. We want an apology from the State

3. We want a fitting Memorial for the Graves of children from Bethany Home in Mount Jerome cemetery

4. We want the records from PACT where they keep all the Protestant Homes records to be lodged with a Government Department.

5. We want a Redress system to recognise our loss.

6. We want the State to stop discriminating against us because it was a Protestant home.The criteria as set down by the government in 2002, in 4.1 of the ACT; for a home to go on the list of homes it had to qualify for the redress criteria. It states that it had to be to be regulated or inspected, or provide education for children or provide care for disabled children, we from the Bethany Home qualified under that criteria.

That is the testimony of Derek Leinster, a survivor of Bethany Home. I appeal to the Minister of State here this evening, Deputy Perry, and the Government to deal with this case. It is a legacy issue - the survivors of Bethany Home when children were ignored and discriminated against. The State, the institutions and the church failed them. I urge the Minister and the Government to do the decent thing and provide the simple things asked for by Derek Leinster and other survivors of Bethany Home.

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