Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The considerable progress made, after many years of waiting by the ladies in question, is acknowledged. I have just been reading the comments of one of the ladies in question. When she was 15 years of age, she was put in St. Mary's, High Park where she worked in the laundry. After approximately a year and a half, the nuns built an extension called the building An Grianán, but all of the girls who were in this so-called training centre worked in the laundry. There is a difference in the case of An Grianán which people accept was, in effect, a laundry. In a previous response to me, the Minister said the scheme was limited specifically to those women who had been both resident and worked in the 12 institutions listed. However, two other training centres are included, namely, the centre in Wexford and the one in Summerhill. Therefore, there are difficulties for this group of women. No matter what scheme is proposed, everybody will not fit neatly within it; there will always be some who will fall outside it. The women in question, some of whom who had good reasons for not applying to the Residential Institutions Redress Board, now find that they have no redress under the restorative scheme. It would be great if the Department would consider this group of women and whether there was something that could be done for them in order that they do not have to take the issue to the High Court or the Supreme Court.

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