Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the mother and baby home in Tuam, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Katherine Zappone, will make a statement at 3 p.m. It is fair to say that the she has put an enormous amount of work into studying this matter over the past two years. The Cabinet accepted her recommendations today. I would like to give the Minister the opportunity to outline her recommendations in detail at 3 p.m. when she is able to do so.

With regard to the Magdalen redress scheme, the Government's intention is to comply with and implement the Ombudsman's recommendations on the scheme, which is to extend the scheme to a wider group of women who did not live in the Magdalen laundries but who worked in them and lived in adjacent institutions. In doing so, we operate as a Government in good faith, accepting the Ombudsman's recommendations and trying to implement them. The scheme is, however, based on the amount of time a woman spent in the institution and the number of hours she worked there, so it is necessary to ask that question. This is the way the scheme works; it is linked to the amount of time spent in the institution and the number of hours worked there. This is how the financial award is calculated, which is the fairest way to do it.

Caranua as a body has, at this stage, allocated over €100 million to people who needed additional practical supports, often advice and counselling and in some cases assistance to modify their homes and with their healthcare. Many of the people who received some of that €100 million have put it to good use and it has helped them in their lives. I absolutely appreciate, as with any system or application process, that it can be difficult. It can be frustrating to fill in forms and it can be difficult to answer questions. Sometimes people do not get the answer they want. This is why we have an appeals mechanism.

I will have to give consideration to the issue around an additional appeals officer. I do not know whether that is necessary, but I will certainly speak to the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, about that. If the Deputy knows of individual cases of people who have had a bad experience of Caranua, perhaps she could pass them on to the Minister or to me and we will try to check them out. As is always the case with any application system, there will be people who are satisfied with how it worked and with the award they received, and there will also be people who are very dissatisfied. This is why we have an appeals system for them.

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