Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister knows, I am on the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth with Deputy Cairns. I thank her for tabling this important motion.

The mother and baby homes are a dark stain on the history of the State. I am on the committee that was tasked with the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. Listening to the testimonies at the committee of those who were personally affected was absolutely heart-wrenching. I met several survivors and it was very traumatising for me to hear their experience, and I was not the person who had to through the experience that they had to.

Their experiences must be validated. The exclusion from the redress scheme of infants who spent less than six months in a mother and baby home tells me that survivors have not been listened to. This is one of the things that survivors called for. Infants were taken from their mothers; they were stolen and, in some cases, they were shipped overseas. The Government is effectively telling these children that their forced separation and suffering is not worthy of compensation and telling women that their suffering will not be validated. This is an absolute scandal.

Will the Minister explain the rationale as to why children will only receive a general payment if they were in an institution for six months or longer? We heard an expert witness testimony at the committee as well who stated: "All who passed through mother and baby homes have been affected and these experiences will have shaped and influenced childhood and adult development." That is regardless of whether someone spent one day, six months or six years in a home. She continued:

...the impact is still relevant and applicable. It is not about the time which someone spent in one of these homes; it is about the quality and nature of the experiences there. Indeed, children who experienced this at six months or younger are arguably the most affected because of the experiences around brain development and growth at that time.

This is not from me; I am not an expert. The expert at the committee went on to state: "It is not true to say that we can break it down in terms of timeframe being used [by the Government] as a measure of impact."

It is time to respect all mother and baby home survivors and families and to change the redress scheme to meet their needs. The scheme that the Minister has proposed will not allow many people to move on from being victims of the mother and baby home institutions to becoming survivors of them. That is the very least that they deserve.

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