Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I raise the issue of the redress schemes for survivors of mother and baby homes. A lot of people, survivors of the mother and baby homes, have been in touch with me. They are extremely frustrated at having missed out on redress measures, whether the so-called enhanced medical card or another part of the redress scheme, because the days they spent living in a home fall short of the 180-day requirement. One was nine weeks short, while another was told they missed eligibility for the redress scheme by six or seven weeks. The frustration they have is with the records. The people I spoke to have said the information given by the institutions to the State is wrong. It is incorrect but they have no way of proving it. The Government is obviously taking the information for the redress scheme from the institutions' records, which creates fierce frustration.

We have had social welfare issues in specific cases, including in one I raised in the Chamber about a year ago. In fairness to the Minister, she informed me at the time that there was a one-to-one case worker on that case. That issue was resolved after 25 years. The woman in question had never received a carer's allowance for her child but she did through dialogue. Is any avenue available to survivors to rectify the records? It is bad enough what they went through in the institutions but now they have nowhere else to go to ask questions, correct the record and get what they are entitled to.

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