Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am still concerned about this proposed amendment. It appears to be an attempt to water down the services available to survivors so that even less home help is on offer compared to the Magdalen and mother and baby institution schemes.

As I said, section 4(1)(d) reads identically to the legislation underpinning both the Magdalen and mother and baby institution schemes. In those schemes and currently in this Bill, public home help services will be provided upon an assessment of need made by a registered medical practitioner or nurse. The Minister wants to amend this so that the entitlement to public home help service would arise only where an assessment of need is made on behalf of the Health Service Executive. What does that mean and how will this be implemented? It seems far too vague a definition to be workable or suitable for a Bill like this. For this reason, we have a problem with the amendment.

I emphasise, as Deputy Connolly and others have done, that this Bill is already a huge breach of trust because it ignores entirely the survivors' repeatedly stated need for the full HAA card. Instead, under the Bill, people will receive little more than the regular medical card. We know from the special advocate, Patricia Carey, that survivors of Magdalen laundries and mother and baby institutions who are already in possession of this enhanced medical card find it to be wholly inadequate for their needs. They remain on interminable waiting lists for desperately needed services in housing and, lest it be forgotten, they have experienced the worst forms of abuse possible at the hands of the State and the church.

The Minister said the HAA card has only ever been given to hepatitis C survivors but the enhanced medical card is not what Justice Quirke recommended for Magdalen survivors. His first recommendation was explicitly that the full range of HAA card services be provided. This is not what survivors of mother and baby homes requested in their hundreds through the OAK consultation commissioned by the Government. They clearly requested the HAA card. It is also not what industrial and reformatory school survivors requested in yet another consultation, which the Government duly ignored. The Department of Education commissioned the Walshe and O'Connell consultation in 2019. The survivors need and explicitly requested the HAA card. This is particularly shocking because re-institutionalisation in nursing homes is the consequence many will face when home help and home care is unavailable. This is something the special advocate, Patricia Carey, has been at pains to make clear. Having been in touch with more than 1,200 survivors of Ireland's institutions, she is speaking from people's direct lived experience. I call on the Minister to withdraw this amendment.

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