Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue. I completely support Sinn Féin’s motion for an expansion of the mother and baby homes redress scheme to all former residents of mother and baby homes regardless of how long or short their stay. I thank Deputy Funchion for bringing this motion to the House.

I echo the words of the survivors' group, who I listened to and met outside the gates of Leinster House today and who described the mother and baby homes redress scheme as a travesty of justice. It truly is a travesty that those who lived or were born into these terrible institutions and spent less than six months there have been completely left out and excluded from claiming deserved redress. Who are those in government to put a timeline on trauma or to decide at what point survivors deserve compensation for the awful conditions in which they were forced to endure? It is a complete insult to these survivors who have already been failed by this State time and again. We really ought to be ashamed of ourselves for allowing this to happen.

This redress scheme is not inclusive and does not meet the needs of the survivors. It is clear that there is a complete lack of survivor voice within this scheme. We cannot create a scheme without the input of the people it affects. This should be at the heart of every redress scheme that is established and it should be the priority of all schemes going forward, be they in respect the mother and baby homes or the mica issue. It is of utmost importance that those affected have a large part to play in discussing the impact and the redress that is due to them.

It is a simple face of governance and politics that when attempting to provide some form of monetary redress to a portion of the public, tragedies must be quantified. My issue is that the mother and baby homes redress scheme appears to be an operation of spreadsheets and finances, with little or no evidence that the survivors were at the heart of things. It seems as though a kitty was agreed upon and, on the basis of that amount, the tragedies of survivors were weighed up and calculated. As I said, I understand that a certain amount of box ticking and bureaucracy must be accepted and expected in order for such schemes to operate. Subjectivity in application will not work. However, in cases such as this, the starting point should not be a final budget or monetary limit. The starting should be, and must be, the survivors.

If we must quantify the pain suffered by Irish citizens, pain that was sanctioned by the State on our behalf, then the Minister must listen to the survivors and base the quantification of the redress not on what has been deemed available but on the Government's genuine desire to offer a meaningful gesture of sorrow and remorse towards those women, children and families who it so gravely wronged. The impact of early trauma cannot be understood by anyone but those who have experienced it. Such trauma should not be overlooked. The time spent in mother and baby homes should be completely irrelevant and the fact that anyone was forced into these institutions against their will, separated from their babies or their mothers, should be the sole focus here. It does not matter for how long they were forcibly separated, the fact of the matter was that they were, and wrongly so. We cannot measure wrongdoing by how long it went on, but rather and simply whether the act was wrong.

The reports that have come out over the past few years regarding these institutions are truly harrowing. It is devastating to read of the huge loss of lives in these homes. In the Stranorlar County Home in Donegal, 343 illegitimate children died in infancy or early childhood. Many of those who lived were subjected to awful conditions and, unfortunately, experienced separation anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues throughout their lives. The very least that we can do is give full and fair redress to every single one of those impacted.

It is the very least the survivors deserve after all they have been forced to endure and continue to endure. I am calling on the Government to do the right thing. This is a shameful chapter in our country's history. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend it did not happen. We need to address it and support the survivors. We must give each and every one of them proper redress for the pain, sorrow and heartache that the State, in our name, has caused them.

See this speech in context