Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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Táim buíoch as an deis labhairt ar an ábhar seo anocht agus as deis a fháil ceisteanna a chur agus, tá súil agam, freagraí a fháil. I am grateful that this topic has been chosen tonight.

The time for speeches is over and I will not be making a speech as such. I will be as brief as I can be.

The Department of Justice and Equality stated on 25 June last, as reported on 21 October in a newspaper, that the Government, on 25 June, approved the immediate implementation of a cash lump-sum payment scheme based on duration of stay in laundries recommended by Mr. Justice John Quirke and tasked an interdepartmental group with giving further detailed consideration to the steps necessary to implement the other recommendations, some of which are complex and will require legislation. The Department stated that more than 150 applications had been received and were being processed and that it was expected that the first offers of payment of a lump sum would issue within four to six weeks of the Government decision. That was similar to the reply I received from the Minister in September to a question.

I will make one point before I ask the question. Since the apology of February last two of the ladies from the laundries have passed away and as of today, Tuesday, 5 November, no woman who has been in a laundry has received the lump-sum payment or any other entitlement.

I noted that the Minister for Finance stated in the Budget Statement that the lump sums would be tax free. I would have assumed that such was a given.

We all have feelings of compassion and understanding of what went on in the laundries. I acknowledge that under this Government more has been progressed than at any other time but I want to know about the Government decision. Has it been made? If not, when will it be made so that one can then count the four to six weeks from that decision. That is the basic question I want to put to the Minister and I would prefer to use the time for his reply.

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan for raising this important matter and for giving me the opportunity to speak on the issue.

The House will be aware that the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and I announced a scheme of lump sum payments on 26 June 2013 for women who were admitted to and worked in the Magdalen laundries, St. Mary's Training Centre, Stanhope Street, and House of Mercy Training School, Summerhill, Wexford. This followed the publication of the report by Mr. Justice Quirke, President of the Law Reform Commission, on the establishment of an ex-gratia scheme and a comprehensive range of supports for the women involved. As the Deputy mentioned, the Government tasked an interdepartmental group with giving further detailed consideration to the steps necessary to implement the other recommendations in Mr. Justice Quirke's report.

Pending completion of that report, arrangements were put in place in my Department to invite and process applications from the women involved. To date, more than 600 application forms have been received and more than 250 of these have been processed to an advanced stage.

The report of the interdepartmental group was discussed and the final details of the scheme agreed at Cabinet this morning. Full details of the scheme will published over the next few days.

The payment of lump sums, as recommended by Mr. Justice Quirke, will be made by my Department. In cases where application forms have been completed and records verified and subject to the clarification of a few legal issues by the Office of the Attorney General, I expect that my Department will be in a position to issue the first offers of payments within the next four to six weeks. The Deputy now has the date.

The provision of other benefits, including weekly payments from the Department of Social Protection and medical services to be provided through the Department of Health, will be dependent on the introduction of administrative and legislative measures. Work has already commenced on these measures and they will be progressed as soon as possible. So that no individual is prejudiced by the time required to give effect to the Government's decision, weekly payments to be made pursuant to the scheme are to be backdated to 1 August 2013.

As announced in the budget, these ex-gratia lump-sum payments will be exempt from income tax as well as the weekly payments, and this will be provided for in the Finance Bill. It had to be provided for in the Finance Bill. It could not have happened without express provision.

Mr. Justice Quirke recommended that as a precondition of receiving benefits under the scheme, the women concerned should sign a waiver not to take proceedings against the State. Before signing the waiver, the women will be encouraged to receive independent legal advice. Applicants will be facilitated to engage their own choice of solicitor and will be provided with a maximum amount from the State of €500 plus VAT as a contribution to the cost of obtaining legal advice on the signing of the waiver.

I am pleased that payments of the lump sums will commence shortly and as already stated, full details of the scheme will be published over the next few days.

It was particularly appropriate that the Deputy raised the matter for today. She was very prescient. The matter was pending to be dealt with by Cabinet and has been dealt with today. There is a formal announcement being made on foot of the Cabinet decision and, of course, I am very anxious that we progress matters further. There remains a considerable number of applications to be dealt with still. There are also various verification procedures to be dealt with.

The final issue the Deputy raised was the passing away of two individuals. It is envisaged under Mr. Justice Quirke's scheme that if someone passed away between the time of the announcement of the scheme and the lump sums becoming payable, a payment would be made to the estate of the individual concerned.

Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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I very much welcome what the Minister stated so that the countdown can begin from today. His point about the independent legal advice that the women can get is an important one.

I have another question. There have been discrepancies between the McAleese report and Mr. Justice Quirke's report, particularly on physical abuse of the ladies and duration of stay. I note in the McAleese report that 61% of those he interviewed were in the laundries less than one year but 58% of the admissions were not recorded in his findings, whereas in Mr. Justice Quirke's report there were 27% whose length of stay was less than one year. According to Mr. Justice Quirke's report, the length of stay of 68% of those with whom he spoke was one to five years, of 13% was five to ten years and of 9% was ten years or more. Given those discrepancies regarding length of stay and the issue of physical abuse, will the Minister be committed to holding an independent forum for survivors so that they can offer testimony regarding the length of stay and the physical abuse that they suffered?

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Many of the former residents of the Magdalen homes very much welcomed the engagement of former Senator McAleese. They very much welcomed the careful consideration and sensitive engagement that he had with them. They were generally very pleased with the report that was published.

Many of them do not want to revisit this issue. They were anxious that the State accept its responsibilities. The Taoiseach, on behalf of the State, apologised for the suffering that they experienced and our focus now is on implementing the scheme for their benefit. We do not believe there is anything additional that would be beneficial to anyone that can be achieved by further inquiries to individuals who have been through stress in their lives again being required in some way to recount past events.

Former Senator McAleese conducted a careful investigation. In the context of what the Deputy says as between Mr. Justice Quirke and former Senator McAleese, it was not Mr. Justice Quirke's job to investigate the background to the Magdalen laundries.

What Mr. Justice Quirke was asked to do, based on the findings of Professor McAleese, was to propose the most appropriate ex gratia scheme that could be put in place to assist the women concerned. He had contact with numbers of them, but he was not asked nor did he attempt to make a definitive decision on the exact percentage of women who had experienced different difficulties. Of course, the issue in the context of the scheme is that the women concerned have to establish two things: first, that they were in either one of the Magdalen laundries or the other two institutions; and, second, the length of time spent in these institutions. The sisters involved are co-operating fully in providing all of the necessary records in an effort to establish and verify timeframes. This is being done in respect of over 250 applicants. The information is available for the processing of some of these applications. There will be a difficulty with a small number of women in cases where records are imperfect. There may well be some disagreement about the length of time involved, but I am advised by my officials that this has not yet emerged as a significant difficulty. We deal with matters in a sensitive and as careful a way as possible, bearing in mind the difficulties all of the women experienced during their lives.