Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not mind repeating some of the things I said the last time I spoke about this. I support this amendment wholeheartedly on the basis that it gives us a meagre opportunity to address the issues on behalf of the 24,000 survivors who were cold-heartedly excluded from the scheme. I do not know if the Minister thinks that way or if he thinks he needs to give them a reason but he has never given an acceptable reason for excluding people who spent six months or less in the homes. Is there a suggestion that six months of your life does not matter? Is it believed that the separation and the trauma of what happened to you and your family do not matter for the rest of your life? It is unfathomable. It looks like the work of a cold-hearted accountant whose main job is to minimise the cost to the State.

It is funny that we are revisiting this theme, having visited it over and over again in the Oireachtas in the past two days in the shape of a denial of redress and compensation to people in nursing homes or people with disabilities. There is a theme running through this from Brigid McCole to CervicalCheck to nursing homes and now to the survivors. The State scrimps and saves when it comes to looking after ordinary people, which is disgraceful, yet the Minister will come in another day and boast of the billions we have in reserve because we are doing so well. We have great multinationals and we do so well on corporation tax but we deny ordinary people their rights. This is outrageous. There is a significant amount of anger about it. I am sure the Minister has been getting hundreds of emails, as have I and everyone else in this Chamber over the past couple of days regarding this issue. It is almost as if you can feel survivors are gasping for air. This is their last chance for somebody to listen and do something for them. Some of the emails are terribly sad but mostly it is the anger that comes through. The anger is speaking to the Minister, who claims that he is pursuing twin tenets of acting with kindness and doing no harm but in their words, this scheme's exclusions are heaping abuse upon abuse. Even this discussion and this Bill, which will be passed because the Government has a majority, is another act of abuse. It is another act of hurt, abuse and pain that ignores people's real lives. I am baffled that the Minister is not doing the right thing by survivors, that he will not widen redress, that he believes that what he is doing is okay and that somehow he thinks he is acting with kindness or having the interests of these people at heart. It is not. It is all about saving the State money.

At the same time, the State does not pursue the religious orders. I mentioned this previously. The Bon Secours order, which was responsible for a significant amount of this pain, hurt and abuse, is the biggest provider of private healthcare in the country and has lots of coffers, land and profits and we are still looking at a meagre system of redress that excludes almost 40% of the people who suffered under this system.

The Minister is signalling a complete failure of the State to recognise the lifelong consequences of forced family separation such as the loss of identity and the abuse this has meant for generations, and it is generations who suffer. It is not just the immediate survivors who suffer. That suffering and scarring is passed on almost like DNA to other generations because it hurts so much and leaves people in such isolation.

This is our chance to raise those concerns and I hope the House passes this very meagre amendment. Fair play to those who tabled this amendment to say we need that report, which will give us a chance to revisit this. We would love to scrap what the Government is doing and redesign a scheme that treats everybody fairly, equally and decently and not to have to stand over this Bill not for the rest of our lives but for the rest of their lives and all the future may contain.

This attitude runs through the Government and the State. You can go down a line from Brigid McCole to CervicalCheck to nursing homes and now this. The Government should hang its head in shame. I would have expected better from the Minister. I am not trying to personalise this but I would have expected better from him. I would have expected him to throw all his toys out of the pram until every single survivor was included and nobody was left behind.

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