Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We need full disclosure and openness from the Government and those who were in positions of power in regard to the Government’s heartless political strategy to withhold and deny disability payments to those in residential care who were entitled to it.

This must involve the full co-operation of and transparency on the part of the Government, including the acceptance of any requests from committees for Ministers to address the matter.

The practice of successive Governments from the 1970s to the 1990s was to deny disability allowance payments to those in institutional care. This affected thousands of people in up to 140 institutional care homes. It has been estimated that somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 people were affected during the period in which this payment was made by the Department of Health and another 2,700 after the then Department of Social and Family Affairs took over the payment. Many of these people had profound disabilities and relied on the State to care for them and to advocate on their behalf. Instead of advocating for these people, the strategy of successive Governments has been to conceal, deny, cover up and delay rather than protecting these citizens, who were often extremely vulnerable. It was a callous and calculated strategy to deny the most vulnerable their rights and one of paying up for those with the resources to take legal action and to punch down against those who did not. As shocking as these revelations are, they should not come as too big a surprise if we consider the other scandals in which successive Governments down through the years have tried to deny people rights by concealing information and settling on the steps of the court. I think of those affected by thalidomide, sodium valproate, the CervicalCheck scandal, the mother and baby home redress scheme and, of course, the nursing home fees.

A Government memo from 1997 estimated that claims from those affected could cost €350 million to €700 million before legal costs were taken into account. In 2006, a case was taken on behalf of a woman who had been receiving a disability payment prior to her admittance to a psychiatric facility in 1983. That payment was stopped within weeks of her being admitted. The case centred on the claim that the regulations that led to the discontinuation of her disability allowance payment were in conflict with the law and ultra viresand that they had no legal standing as a result. The case was settled in 2008. If, as the current Attorney General concluded yesterday, the State had no positive legal duty to make retrospective payments in respect of the disabled persons maintenance allowance, why were this case and others settled by the State? A further joint memo for Cabinet was prepared in 2009 by the then Minister for Health, Mary Harney, and the then Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mary Hanafin, which assessed the potential implications of the case. Two members of the current Cabinet were also members of Cabinet when this memo was prepared and brought forward for discussion, namely, Deputy Micheál Martin, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Deputy Eamon Ryan, then Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. Three other current Members from Government parties were also Ministers in 2009 when this memo was prepared for Cabinet, namely, Deputies O'Dea, Ó Cuív and Brendan Smith. Do they stand over the denial of these payments? Do they stand over the strategy to conceal, deny, cover up and delay rather than protecting vulnerable citizens?

In 2011, when the Fianna Fáil-Green Party coalition was replaced by Fine Gael and Labour, another brief was prepared on this issue. In the Dáil last week, the Taoiseach said that the legal advice regarding the disability allowance suggested that the State did not have a leg to stand on. How does this square with the conclusions of the Attorney General? The Taoiseach is reported as having said that the Government will do "“whatever is legally required and morally just”. Will the Government do so now?

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