Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Every time I stand up in this House to talk about mother and baby homes I feel the weight of it. It is always hard to know where to begin when talking about something that has caused generations of trauma for so many people. It is difficult to convey the hurt, the bewilderment and the sheer rage that no one is actually being held accountable for these crimes and it does not look like anyone ever will be.

The scale of what went on in these institutions is staggering. It is horrifying. There were forced adoptions, falsified records, vaccine trials, medical experiments, missing children, mass graves, the forced separation of families and the casual obliteration of histories. Survivors deserve justice. The public are behind them. The Government still is not listening.

Despite what the Minister claims, this clearly is not a survivor-centred scheme, nor is it based on transitional justice. The headline-grabbing figures might look impressive at first glance but the real story lies in the details, which include time limits, the signing away of litigation rights and the disregarding of very many survivors' trauma. Regrettably, none of this is surprising. After all, this Government resisted attempts to give survivors access to their personal records, continues to deny the GDPR, and refused to extend the commission of investigation to allow greater accountability. All of this compounds the abuse suffered by thousands of individuals and their families from the State-administered and church-run system that incarcerated single mothers, victims of rape, and children. The redress scheme needs considerable reform. If the Minister is sincere about his intention to listen to survivors, he needs to start acting like it.

I am going to use my time to highlight some of the deficiencies of the scheme but there are many others I will not have time to address. The Government needs to listen to the survivors groups, not to a deeply inadequate commission's report and not to attempts by the Department to limit the rights of survivors. The main defect is the highly insulting requirement for individuals to have spent six months as a child in a mother and baby institution.

Forced family separation is one of the worst human rights violations. The State and religious orders intentionally separated mothers and babies, stigmatised them and denied them the means to find each other. This is a lived and very real trauma, which is not bound by a minimum time in an institution. Someone born in a mother and baby home could have spent a week there, but a lifetime searching for his or her family. Under this scheme, that person is not entitled to redress.

Survivors have expressed their devastation at this cruel stipulation. Clinicians and medics have shown that the six-month requisite has no basis in evidence and shows no understanding of trauma. The letter to the Minister from over 30 experts stated that childhood trauma has the greatest impact early in childhood. These experts pointed out that there is no threshold of time linked to this trauma and, as a result, “having an arbitrary period of 6 months’ exposure is simply that, arbitrary". This arbitrary time restriction needs to go. Any and all children who were subjected to this cruel system deserve acknowledgement and redress. That is the absolute bare minimum.

The second issue relates to the provision that those who received redress in respect of time in mother and baby homes under the residential institutions redress scheme cannot access this scheme. This limitation is symptomatic of the absence of any understanding of trauma and a pervasive civil servant mindset that is more concerned with balance sheets than justice. The language used in the Government’s proposal gives a sense of the cold, unsympathetic language used. It states: "The intention is to prevent double-counting by making a second payment in respect of the same institutional experience." In other words, how dare survivors seek more redress? Why can they not be happy with the little they were given?

This language is condescending and paternalistic. It makes another appearance in the third matter I will raise, that of the legal waiver. A survivor of a mother and baby home who wants to avail of this scheme must sign away his or her rights to take this matter to court. In essence, the Government is proposing a legal gagging order on survivors. In other words, survivors are being told to take the official apology, and as little as €5,000, to sign away their rights to any legal recourse. Not only is this deeply troubling in principle, the proposed scheme’s language reveals the patronising attitude of the Government, which acknowledges that:

applicants may be disappointed at the inclusion of a waiver in the Scheme, and some may interpret it as representing a failure to take responsibility or ... be truly accountable. This is not the case.

Why is this not the case? The Taoiseach apologised. In other words, sign away your rights and be happy with an inadequate apology. The Government goes on to explain how survivors should accept redress as it will spare them burdensome court procedures and the risk of incurring high legal fees. It does not take a legal expert to read between the lines here. If survivors do not sign the waiver, their other option will be an adversarial court case because the State will oppose them.

The Government seems to have no appreciation of the anger among survivors and the general public. People are simply not going to stand for this redress scheme. Not only is there a complete lack of understanding and empathy for survivors, but no lessons have been learned, for example, from the ongoing mass rejection of the CervicalCheck scheme. The same will happen with this redress scheme unless major deficiencies are rectified. Survivors will rightly reject it and they will be supported by society. Limitations, caveats and waivers were found in previous redress schemes for survivors of institutional and clerical abuse and Magdalen laundries. The difference now is that we will not stand for it. In the past week, we have got a sense of the anger and frustration at this scheme. The opposition to its flawed elements will only increase when it comes to the legislation.

If the Minister will not make the necessary changes because it is the right thing to do, perhaps he will do so in response to the waves of public pressure that are on the way. We saw it last year with the public outcry concerning the archive of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. Society has changed. People are incredibly angry at the abuses perpetrated by this State and religious organisations. Furthermore, they are shocked at the treatment of survivors and this anger will not abate.

The next issue is the Minister's reference to the birth information and tracing Bill as being part of the Government’s response. During pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill, we heard from survivor groups, human rights advocates and experts, and data rights experts who pointed out multiple issues with the legislation. It places barriers on access to birth records, limits early life and care information and denies siblings and other relatives access. The legislation needs significant changes if it is to come anywhere near what the Minister is claiming it does.

Where is the accountability? Ultimately, nobody is being held to account for the worst abuses perpetrated by this State against its citizens, including vulnerable young women, people with special needs, victims of rape and incest and members of ethnic minorities. Why are existing laws against incarceration, forced labour or human trafficking not being applied? Why is there one rule for church and State and another for everybody else? Why has the coroner not investigated the unnatural deaths that occurred in these institutions? We know there are mass graves and we know that crimes occurred. Instead of responding by seeking justice and accountability, the Government’s burials Bill limits the powers of the coroner to investigate. You could not make it up.

Disgracefully, the outline of the scheme informs us that the Minister has written to the religious congregations seeking to "meet with them in order to discuss how they might contribute to the Scheme." This is cap-in-hand stuff. It is 2021, not 1950. Where are the demands for justice? Where are the attempts to seize the proceeds of illegalities? These orders profited from these systems. Not only did they receive State payments; they participated in forced labour, human trafficking and the sale of babies for money. Many of the people who committed these heinous crimes are now deceased but not all, and the orders still have assets from the money made off the backs of young mothers, children and babies. Where is the scheme to seize those assets for survivors?

I do not have the time to raise other deficiencies, such as the overall inadequacies of the financial amounts and the limiting of the scheme to certain institutions, but these will also need to be addressed. While the scheme in its current form has many insulting and callous flaws, it is not a done deal. The Government still has time to do the right thing and put in place a scheme that is survivor centred and based on transitional justice. There is still time to do the right thing by survivors but the Government should know that if it does not, survivors will not stand for it and nor will any of us.

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