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

There was an announcement today about the opening of the mother and baby redress scheme arising from the legislation around that scheme. There is widespread anger among people who went through the mother and baby institutions over the arbitrary six-month rule and exclusions from the redress scheme. I have never heard an answer from the Minister or the Government as to that arbitrary six-month rule. I am an adoptee and any adoptee or psychologist, or anybody who knows anything about children, will know the impact of the regime that existed around taking children away from their mothers because they happened to be unmarried and that the damage and trauma start from the moment of separation.

That is the crime, if you like, and the trauma that may result from the forcible separation of mothers from children is the issue that needs redress. How, in the face of the testimony of survivors of these institutions and everything we know about the development of human psychology in children, can the Government even now stand over this six-month exclusion? It is shocking. As a doctor, the Taoiseach should know that. Does he have a response to that? Even at this late stage, the Government could do the right thing and extend the scheme to all those who were victims of that terrible regime and were forced through those institutions.

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