Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We have heard about the wide range of concerns and shortcomings regarding the proposed mother and baby institutions payment scheme. These concerns echo those raised by the survivor groups, which are yet again deeply disappointed by the failure to deliver on fair redress. The scheme falls far short of the absolute minimum required to begin to address the great damage done to those abducted and incarcerated in mother and baby homes. The scheme has many significant flaws, including that only 34,000 out of 58,000 survivors will be covered; that it fails to acknowledge the devastating impact of forced family separation; that children aged less than six months are not included; that forced adoption, fostering and boarding out are not covered; that racial discrimination of mixed-race children is not recognised; that payments are based solely on the length of time spent in an institution; that people must waive their rights to take legal action; that payments are ex gratia, meaning there is no accountability for abuse; that vaccine trials are excluded; and that no agreement has been reached for an equal sharing of responsibility and costs between the State and the congregations concerned.

Arguably, that last point is the most significant shortcoming of this payment scheme. The scheme completely fails to acknowledge the full and equal culpability of church and State for the egregious harm done to so many mothers and children during that dark period. There can be no coming to terms as a country with our past without proper accountability. It beggars belief that the Minister has not secured agreement from those religious orders that ran these homes and are largely responsible for the cruel regimes that inflicted such human rights abuses. Have any lessons at all been learned from the experience of the 2002 residential institutions redress scheme? We must wonder about this.

This was a redress scheme where we were told that the State and religious orders shared equal responsibility for the damage done to so many people in residential institutions. The religious congregations involved, however, pulled a fast one and persuaded a weak Minister to agree to cap their contribution at €127 million. The redress scheme, of course, ended up costing €1.5 billion, meaning the religious contribution was less than 10% of the total cost. I reiterate that it was less than 10%. So much for equal culpability. Not only that, but, shockingly, 20 years later the €127 million has not even been paid in full. This is incredible. Then, in 2009, on foot of further horrific revelations and the Ryan report, pressure came on the orders to increase their contribution. At that point, they offered to make a voluntary contribution of €352 million. This was 13 years ago.

Unbelievably, a mere €120 million of that amount has been paid to date. It is very disappointing, although I suppose not surprising, that the six religious orders which ran the mother and baby homes have yet to agree to contribute anything. Most people would argue that culpability as well as responsibility for redress should be equally shared. That, after all, is official Government policy. That is what the Minister must secure - a full equal share of the final cost from the orders concerned. If the Minister cannot achieve that, I believe that Government must consider repossessing those taxpayer-funded education and health properties for which those religious orders have assumed possession. It really is very hard to stomach some religious orders squirrelling away assets into trusts of various kinds when these were publicly funded properties. It is twice as hard to take that when the orders refuse to meet their moral obligations to provide redress for their wrongdoing and seek to put their assets beyond reach. Will the Minister do the right thing? Will he rethink this scheme? It is clearly not fit for purpose.

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