Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I start with a reminder that the crimes committed by the State and church against mothers and children were crimes from which we, as a society, must learn. This is not just the case in Ireland but globally. Given the long struggle here involving the victims of the various church and State institutions that persecuted, in particular, women and children and, more specifically, working class women and children, as well as minorities, Travellers, children of mixed race and so on, it is important to see the relevance of this experience to current events in the world.

In discussing the crimes the church and the State committed against women and children in the aftermath of the Irish revolution, it would be wrong not to mention the crimes being committed against women in Iran by the authorities there. A systematic regime of denying women self-determination and rights to their bodily autonomy and freedom resulted in the murder of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, some 40 days ago because she refused to abide by the dress code of the moral police. That is just like how we had our moral police in this country. We thought it was okay to incarcerate women because they did not abide by certain religious rules and to stigmatise them and their children. We still see this happening today worldwide. This is not a situation exclusive to Iran by any means. It is happening in Iran, though, and we are seeing a heroic struggle being undertaken by people across that country, men and women, from different ethnic backgrounds, who are coming out in protest against the brutal treatment of women who just deserve the right to be themselves and to determine who they are. It is important to say this now because there is such a strong parallel between the history of Iran and that of Ireland.

Iran, quite rightly, demands to assert its right to self-determination against the manipulation of Western powers. For many years, those powers tried to control that state and region and install puppet regimes. It was very similar to the way Ireland was subject to the British Empire. Iran had a revolution in 1979, just like we had a revolution. It overthrew the Shah and declared self-determination. This self-determination, however, is now being denied to women in Iran. This strongly parallels what happened after the Irish revolution. It was a revolution of great promise to liberate the Irish people from an empire but that then incarcerated women and children for decades. They were treated as slaves and second-class citizens.

It is outrageous that the Iranian regime is doing this. As much as I absolutely assert the right of people in the Middle East, in Iran and elsewhere, to stand up against Western manipulation in the region and the hypocrisy and double standards of some of those who wish to condemn them for various things, nonetheless what the Iranian state is doing is shameful. It should desist and it should allow women and everybody in Iran the self-determination that people are demanding and taking to the streets for. I feel it is important to say this and to point to these parallels. I say this in the hope that the Iranian authorities may be listening and may come to understand that if self-determination is not self-determination in every respect, then what we end up with is what we have seen happen in this State. This happened even after we were supposedly liberated from empires.

I also draw Deputies' attention to the fact that I received a message from the Adoption Rights Alliance. This point may have been referred to already in the debate, but I was not here earlier because I had to visit someone in hospital. The Government promised to get people's personal information to them within 30 days. the Adoption Rights Alliance is hearing reports, from the Adoption Authority of Ireland, at least, but I am not sure what the situation is with Tusla, that this is not going to happen. The Adoption Rights Alliance is hearing that this will not happen. It may instead be more like a 90-day period, and into January.

It would be interesting for the Minister to comment if he is aware of this. Certainly, the message I have received is of grave disappointment people are feeling after the long wait to get to this point to the effect that there are now apparently significant delays in their getting the information - their personal information, histories, etc. - that they have requested. I ask the Minister to respond and to do whatever is necessary to remedy that situation so that the promise that people would get that information is delivered upon.

On the substance of the Bill, no doubt these are points that others have made. I echo, I suspect, what others have said.

The Minister will be well aware of the critiques that are coming from survivors' organisations, the ICCL, the Association of Mixed Race Irish and generally from survivors of the mother and baby home institutions. There are quite a few problems with this. Although we are glad to be here at some level, the fact that we are here is because of the relentless, brave, heroic campaigning of survivors who were let down so badly by the church and State. Ignored for so long, fighting on with determination, bravery and heroism, they finally forced the State to acknowledge the wrong that has been done to so many people by the church and State and insisted that they get acknowledgement, apology and genuine redress.

In that context, it is disappointing that the Minister has not responded to the points that were made about the completely arbitrary and unjustified basis for the 180 days' cut-off point for being in institutions. I studied psychology, among other things, when I was in college. One of the first things one does when one studies psychology is that one learns about children. One learns about child psychology. To be honest, while there are many schools of thought in psychology and psychoanalysis, there is absolutely no dispute among people who study the development of human psychology that the earliest minutes, hours and days of a child's life shape that child. The trauma of being separated, in effect, by force, by the perverted morality that dominated the State and the thought children should be separated from mothers if those mothers did not abide by certain religious ideas and a certain twisted notion of religious morality, had an effect on those children and those mothers from the second it happened. It will shape the psychology of children and mothers. For many, the damage and the trauma that is done in those first hours, days and weeks will never leave them. The idea that one can have an arbitrary cut-off where, for 179 days, there is - what was the ludicrous phrase Deputy Catherine Connolly referred to - a tabula rasais nonsense. That there would be a clean slate up until 180 days where one is not affected but that on day 181, one is a legitimate case that deserves redress is utterly preposterous. It subverts the integrity of the apology of the State. It subverts and undoes the integrity of the acknowledgement the State has supposedly done to suggest that it can be valued in that way. It is nonsense that, for if a person was in an institution for 179 days, no harm was really done but that on day 180 the harm was done. After that, we are on an escalating scale. Even at this stage, the Minister should change that and respond to what is self-evidently the case. The amount of time someone may have spent in an institution is not the key factor. It is the crime that was done to all in those situations and how that impacted on people and gave rise to the trauma they suffered as a result of forced separation, incarceration, stigmatisation and all that goes with it. I am well aware, as somebody who is an adoptee, that there are good outcomes and there are bad outcomes. Everybody is affected, but some are affected in different and more damaging ways. That is not something that one can correlate in some sort of mechanical way according to the number of days one spent in an institution and, quite frankly, it is insulting to suggest that one can.

It is also, as has been said, a matter of sadness that the Minister has not acknowledged the pain and anger that survivors - mothers and children who went through the mother and baby home regime - feel at the mother and baby home report which informs this and the failure to fully give weight to and acknowledge the testimonies of the survivors themselves. As the ICCL points out, the Minister promised a review. That review has not happened. From day one, I described that report here in the Dáil as a whitewash. I still believe that to be the case. It was a whitewash because to downgrade the direct testimony of the survivors in the way that it did, and to have an insulting summary, as was the case, which uses phrases such as "no evidence", "They were not 'incarcerated' in the strict meaning of the word ...", that certain evidence was "the product of a creative writing class.", etc., is completely outrageous. It is insulting and compounded the pain and the trauma that people felt. That review should have happened. That review and the rejection of that sort of summarisation of the experience of all those who went through the mother and baby home scheme should have been the precondition for establishing the redress Bill.

Another issue I am sure has been pointed out to the Minister already is that there is no specific compensation for illegal adoptions, forced labour, unlawful vaccine trials, abuse as adopted child or death, or specific provision for discrimination where systematic racism was at work. As the Minister will be aware, this issue was highlighted by many, including the UN special rapporteurs. The fact that the Bill provides payment in terms of work-related payment rather than acknowledging that it was forced labour - in effect, slavery - of the women who were incarcerated, is unacceptable.

I note that the issue of absences from the institution are not provided for where there were, almost certainly, definitely good reasons, as the ICCL pointed out, in some cases for people escaping from these institutions. However, the period for which they might have escaped is not accounted for in the context of their residency in the institution.

The general scheme of the Bill referred to the fact that there would be an enhanced medical card. That has been replaced by health services without charge but only for people who were resident for 180 days. The choice of 180 days is completely arbitrary. For those survivors outside of Ireland, the medical compensation is only €3,000.

This is a completely arbitrary and totally inadequate figure. They do not get a commitment for all of the health services they need to be provided, not without charge. The Bill also does not provide specifically for trauma-informed counselling and therapies, as survivors have called for. The provisions of the Bill rule out the possibility of people availing of the scheme if they have already taken legal action and got a court settlement in respect of the period in the institution the Bill covers. There was a downgrading of the requirement for the chief deciding officer with regard to advertising the fact of the redress scheme. In particular, the Bill does not expressly require advertising abroad. The general scheme of the Bill did provide for this.

I am sure the Minister has probably read a lot of these so I do not need to rehearse them all. Certainly, judging from the communications I receive, many people feel a lot needs to change and be amended in the Bill to address the concerns. The worst thing of all is the arbitrary 180 days. It is an insult. It needs to be changed. The dismissal by the mother and baby institutions report in its summary of the testimonies of survivors is a pretty deep insult. People now feel the inadequacies in the Bill show a failure, despite apologies, to take on board the trauma, suffering and hurt people experienced at the hands of this brutal regime that did so much wrong to so many women and children.

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