Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

There are at least three elements to redress, the first of which is acknowledging what happened to those to whom it happened as it is their truth. The second is holding those responsible to account. The third is financial compensation; not that financial compensation can redress some of the things that happened to people and how it traumatised their lives.

Survivors were asked to put their trust in the State to relive the most traumatic moments in their lives in the belief that their lived experiences would be heard and would bring about justice and change. That trust was abused, with their own testimonies labelled as "contaminated" and "unreliable" by the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. The commission decided that it alone knew the truth; denying the lived experience of survivors in the official narrative. It was paternalistic and cruel. The commission decided there was no evidence of women being forced to enter mother and baby institutions by the church or State authorities; no evidence of forced adoption, racial discrimination or children injured in vaccine trials; and very little evidence of physical abuse. The report is fundamentally flawed to the point of being an outright attempt to rewrite history. Yet, the Minister chose to base his redress scheme on that report, excluding people who were boarded out or put into abusive adoptive placements, those who were subjected to vaccine trials and those who spent less than six months there as a child. It ignores the lifelong impact of forced incarceration, forced adoption and family separation.

At a press conference announcing the redress scheme, the Minister was asked about children who were left out of the scheme. He stated that "children who were in for less than six months would not have been aware of their experiences, would have been too young to remember their experiences." I wonder why we even have maternity leave when one considers that kind of thinking. Those few months are really critical in human development. I do not believe the Department understands early childhood trauma because if it did, this would not be put forward. Those people were not excluded from the scheme due to the lack of understanding; they were excluded because of costs. It seems like the primary lesson the State has learned in the past is not how to better conduct a redress process, but how to limit the cost to the State. There is a narrative here.

There were 13 unlicensed vaccine trials carried out on approximately 1,135 children from the institutions. Pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline knew these children were being used as guinea pigs. They were treated as lesser than children who had parents or guardians to speak up for them and advocate on their behalf. These companies have an absolute moral responsibility to acknowledge that, even at this at this very late stage. The idea that redress is not being sought from the religious institutions, or that it is being gingerly sought from them, is just not acceptable.

We might look at the properties that were owned and have been sold recently by the Sisters of Mercy. They sold more than 45 properties. A convent based beside Beaumont Hospital was sold to the HSE for €2.7 million. The State has paid the Sisters of Mercy more than twice as much cash as it received in redress from the previous redress scheme. Really, there are no exceptions to culpability in what is happening, and that retraumatises people.

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