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

The scale of abuse, terror and cruelty experienced by thousands of women, children and infants in mother and baby homes is almost unimaginable. This includes unexplained infant deaths, disappeared children, illegal adoptions, incarceration, forced labour, illegal medical experimentation and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Both the church and State have responsibility for these abuses and their legacy. The religious orders and pharmaceutical companies must be held to account and pay their share.

The extent of harm cannot be quantified. There is the stigma that followed people all their lives, the psychological impact of losing the parent-child bond, the weight of never knowing what happened to your child and the intergenerational trauma.

No redress scheme could adequately compensate survivors but the Government's proposed scheme is shamefully minimal, exclusionary and insulting. Despite the wishes of survivors and the recommendations of UN human rights bodies, it seems the Minister is determined to push ahead with deeply deficient and even offensive reparation. With no evidence basis, and purposely going against clinical experts and survivors, people who spent less than six months in homes as children are excluded. People who suffered illegal adoptions or medical trials or were boarded out will get nothing. More than 24,000 people will not be eligible. Those whom the Minister deems worthy of compensation will receive as little as €5,000. For many people, it is not about the money but that cannot be used as a defence for such an insultingly low figure.

This disgraceful scheme is being done in the name of the Irish people, yet I have not met one person who is not outraged by the Minister's plans. There is still time to do the right thing, that is, to enable all survivors to access redress and to hold the church and pharmaceutical companies to account. It is difficult to catalogue the defects in the scheme but its overarching philosophy is to award as little as possible and to grant that to as few people as possible. This principle is obvious in the Bill but some of the particulars were reported by Jennifer Bray in The Irish Times earlier this year. Documents from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform warned that extending the scheme would, "create a significant precedent regarding claims from many others in society who may feel they are also entitled to some form of redress or recognition payment based on any length of residency or attendance in an institution or other setting". That is the reality behind this scheme; the true priorities. It is clear the Minister either has a lack of will or capacity to overrule those priorities. There is a general feeling that he was left holding the bag but is he willing to put his name to this? As he seems to have decided it is good enough to stand over, he must be held accountable.

Another tactic used is to claim the Minister is going beyond the deeply flawed commission's report. It has obvious and painful inaccuracies that basically absolve the church and State of responsibility, blaming society instead. This is blatantly untrue and it is disgraceful that the Government is willing to cling to this as the definitive record. The Minister initially committed to providing an independent review of the testimony given to the commission. In August, survivors learned from the Irish Examinerthat he was abandoning that plan. In December last year, we had the High Court declaration that the commission had wrongly denied eight survivors their statutory right to comment on many draft findings. The commission is unwilling to explain its methodology and findings at Oireachtas committees, as it knows full well that its conduct and report is indefensible. Its recommendations are arbitrary, ill-founded and punitive. When the Minister says he is going beyond the commission’s recommendations, I hope he realises how hollow and disrespectful those words are.

There are several major issues in the Bill that ignore the wishes of survivors, the views of human rights experts and the recommendations of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. First, there is the purposeful exclusion of whole categories of survivors. This is manifested in two ways primarily: people who as children spent less than six months in institutions; and then disregarding whole categories of abuse, such as forced family separation and illegal medical trials. The disregard for those who were born and spent time in mother and baby homes is highly immoral. It is disgusting that people are being denied any form of recognition because of what are, frankly, ignorant and hurtful statements from the Minister and officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Ignoring all psychological and developmental evidence, the Minister claimed 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". Besides being a reprehensible statement in this context, it is also factually inaccurate. That the Minister for children is disregarding the central role of the first six months of a child's life for their development is wrong on so many levels. When the Minister announced the scheme last year, more than 30 clinical experts wrote to him stating that childhood trauma has the greatest impact early on 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 six months' exposure is simply that, arbitrary. All children who were subjected to this cruel system deserve acknowledgement and redress. That is the bare minimum. Officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform dismissed the experiences and trauma of this group of survivors because they would likely have gone on to live "comfortable and contented lives". Not only is that just made up, it is wholly ignorant of all we know about mother and baby homes and the trauma and stigma that followed people all their lives. The exclusion is based on a dehumanising position that shows this Government has no interest in evidence or lived experience.

The disregard for the wishes of survivors further demonstrates this point. The Minister commissioned the Oak report. He presented it as a chance for survivors to have their voices heard in shaping the redress scheme. It is especially callous to ask survivors for their input, only for him to then reject it. Survivors participated in good faith and shared their experiences and opinions, only for the Minister to ignore them. That is unforgivable. The consultation was just a tick-box exercise for the Minister and the Department. The lives and experiences of survivors are just a bureaucratic exercise to be thrown aside. I will quote sections of the report to ensure they are on the Dáil record and so that the people can understand how the Minister is simply ignoring survivors. The executive summary states:

Many survivors stated that the recommendations were inappropriate, that eligibility criteria were arbitrary and lacked an acceptance of the realities and conditions in the homes. ... The largest proportion of written submissions stated that all mothers and babies who resided in mother and baby homes should be eligible for redress, regardless of the duration or year of their stay and regardless of whether children were accompanied or unaccompanied by their mothers.

On the same page of the report, there is a direct quote from a survivor:

I think it is disingenuous of the government to place an arbitrary six months redress restriction on residents. From a neurobiological perspective the damage done to an infant is catastrophic. It is a cop-out not to include human rights. The State has failed us...

It is in there in black and white. There is no ambiguity. The survivors are clear. Clinicians are clear. The evidence is clear. The recommendation of the children’s committee was very strong on this issue, based on our engagement with survivors, their advocates and human rights experts. We required that:

The six-month residency requirement must be removed. Anyone who was resident in one of the institutions should be entitled to a payment, regardless of time spent therein.

When I and others put forward amendments to remove this deeply insulting exclusion, will the Minister defend it each time? Will he claim giving people access to their personal information is all they wanted every time? More worrying, will he use the money message excuse to rule us out of order?The six-month exclusion has to go. It should never have been there in the first place.

The second way the Government is excluding survivors is by dismissing abuses, most prominently forced family separation and illegal adoptions, the practice of being boarded out, forced labour and illegal medical trials. Here, the Government has cobbled together different and equally pathetic excuses to deny any form of restitution for the harm caused by the State, the church and pharmaceutical companies. The flawed commission’s findings are used as a rationale. Individuals are being told that the experimentation to which they never gave their consent - one the most basic tenets of medical science - is a matter for them to take up with the pharmaceutical companies, as if the church and State did not facilitate them

This group must be included in the scheme and the State should pursue the pharmaceutical giants.

Adopted people and the survivors of forced family separation, one of the worst crimes imaginable, have been neglected in this process. They were not included in the terms of the commission, meaning there is no official recognition and they have yet to receive a proper State apology.Recently in the Seanad the Minister gave an attempt at an apology, with a handful of survivors invited. The whole incident revealed the Government’s priorities rather than meaningfully recognising the abuses and crimes involved.

The OAK report, as I mentioned, stressed that all survivors should be included. The principle incorporates these groups but in case there was any doubt, it is specifically stated in the executive summary that:

eligibility would be further extended to include those subjected to coercive family separation outside institutions or who were illegally adopted/fostered/boarded out without adequate supervision and vetting. To do otherwise...would undermine the legitimacy of the scheme and fail to deliver a survivor centred response focused on the nature and effects of the harm suffered by the survivors.

The Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, aware of the Minister’s treatment of survivors, firmly supported them in its recommendation that the scheme should recognise all rights violations and all harms perpetrated in the institutional and family separation system, including but not limited to, those identified by the OAK report. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, has strongly called for a broadening of the scheme as recognition for the range and scale of abuses in these State-run or State-financed institutions. In addition, there is a mountain of recommendations from UN human rights experts that the Government is ignoring, hoping that the average person is not aware of them. I can only list some of the many findings. A joint letter from six UN special rapporteurs in November 2021 said that as illegal adoption may come within the legal definition of trafficking in persons, it is critical that the redress scheme "establishes a process for effective investigations and ensures access to effective remedies to all victims, without exception".In July, the UN Human Rights Committee called for the state to recognise fully the violation of human rights of all victims in these institutions and provide redress. In September, UN human rights experts called for redress for victims of racial discrimination and systemic racism in Irish childcare institutions. This point is important and often overlooked. Misogyny, classism, racism and other forms of discrimination were inherent in these cruel systems. Women and children from poorer families were often treated worst, children with mixed heritages were abused and Travellers and disabled people were also targeted.

An important part of transitional justice is recognition. It is truth telling. It is not just memorialisation and it needs to be in the legislation. The IHREC was clear on this, as were others. The legislation should outline the range of abuses and human rights violations. These should be listed and every survivor should be compensated. The scale of people currently excluded from the scheme is shocking and the amount of abuse not recognised is shameful.

The next major issue is the disgracefully low compensation. We know for some survivors it is not about money but about acknowledgment and some help with living costs and medical expenses. All the UN bodies have called for proper compensation. The Oireachtas children's committee, based on engagements with survivors and others, has called for an increase in the payment amounts, for Health Amendment Act, HAA, medical cards, tailored, trauma-informed counselling supports and for legal aid to enable survivors to seek independent advice at every stage. Some survivors will get as little as €5,000 which is truly pathetic. While no form of redress could adequately compensate survivors, that cannot be used as an excuse to grant paltry amounts. It is a pathetic excuse and the Minister knows it.

A legal waiver remains under the terms of the general payment or work-related payment in section 26. The UN Human Rights Committee, UN human rights experts and the children's committee have all called for the removal of legal waivers. Those who apply for redress should not be gagged or restricted from taking separate legal action. Again, it is an attempt to control survivors, to prevent them from even thinking of seeking more redress than the small amounts the Minister has decided they can get.

Another significant issue is the lack of interim payments. Again, this is another matter survivors were very clear on. The OAK report states that the most commonly held view in relation to financial recognition was that "an immediate interim ex-gratia, common experience payment, should be paid as urgently as possible". This was particularly the case bearing in mind the older age profile of survivors who it was thought should be prioritised, as well as those suffering serious illness or other extreme circumstances. Not only was an interim payments system the obvious and right thing to do, the Minister has had this report since May last year, so for 17 months he has done nothing on this vital issue. Unfortunately, the cold reality is that some people have already passed away and never received any form of compensation due to this inaction.

Finally, there is the matter of accountability. This is something that survivors and the public want and that UN committees have asked for. Why are the Church and pharmaceutical companies not being held accountable? The Minister is apparently in negotiations with religious orders to contribute to the cost of redress. This should not be a subject for negotiation. The Government should be seizing assets. These orders profited from crimes including forced labour and child trafficking. We have laws to rightly seize the proceeds of illegality. If a gang carried out these crimes there would be no hesitation but because it is the Church, Government parties would not dare. The conduct of these so-called Christian organisations is shameful. If the religious orders had any credibility they would hand over assets in contrition. Their hypocrisy is obvious. Furthermore, the Government is making no effort to hold the pharmaceutical companies accountable. Never mind any form of legal culpability, we have basically given up on the idea that anyone will ever be prosecuted for these crimes.

It is clear that from its conception this scheme was not designed with the preferences of survivors or human rights standards in mind. It was shaped by financial concerns and the Government’s philosophy of doing just enough to look good and just enough for the headlines. This Bill intentionally excludes over 20,000 survivors. It willfully ignores human rights violations and crimes and it ignores the Minister's own consultation and numerous UN human rights bodies. It is frankly disgraceful and insulting. It is another stain on how Ireland has treated a group of people who have suffered countless abuses, people who have suffered enough. The Minister knows it and his colleagues know it. This is clear from the number of Government speaking slots that no one turns up for. Many were eager to speak on the eviction ban and energy Bill but where are they today? There has been just one Government speaker, who criticised much of the Bill. Last week there were no Government speakers. They know this is a hollow, offensive scheme but will they vote for it? I am calling for a vote of conscience on this controversial Bill. I know many backbenchers are deeply uncomfortable with it. If the Minister is so confident he is doing the right thing, he should allow a free vote.

Many survivors have spoken out already while others, understandably, are just too tired. They have been worn down by the State and by successive Governments for years, including this one. Along with others on the Opposition benches, I will do what I can. I will be putting forward amendments to address the most egregious aspects of this Bill at every stage. I have no doubt the Minister will disregard them, just as he has disregarded survivors and human rights experts but at least the will of the people will be presented.People want justice for survivors. They want a proper scheme that recognises the harm caused. The Government certainly does not represent Irish society on this. It will be on the record that at least there were some public representatives who spoke up. It is not too late. The decision is the Minister's.

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