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

The Taoiseach mentioned the State apology to mothers and children who went through the mother and baby home institutions, but the fact is that approximately 24,000 people who went through those institutions as children were excluded from the redress scheme. The redress scheme is still not open for applications, which is pretty incredible given the age of many of these people. The exclusion of people on the very arbitrary grounds that they did not spend more than six months in a mother and baby home was a really shocking and terrible decision. A lovely woman called Susan, who comes into my clinic regularly, has been campaigning on this. She is an adoptee and was in a mother and baby home. She thinks she probably will be entitled to redress because she thinks she was there for more than six months, although there is not a lot of consistency in the information in the various documents she is getting from the different people to whom she can apply for documents. However, she feels she is letting down others by taking up the redress when so many others were excluded. She rightly identifies, as other people and I have said to the Taoiseach, that the length of time spent in these institutions does not take into account the trauma of mothers and children who were forcibly separated. The fundamental wrong that was done to children is that they were forcibly separated from their mothers. Susan is so upset about all of this. She talks about only existing on paperwork and never being able to trust the Government ever again; I could go on. Even at this late stage, the Government should recognise that all of those who were forcibly separated from their mothers should be entitled to the redress and indeed, that the redress scheme should be opened as a matter of urgency.

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