Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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I move:

That Dáil Éireann: acknowledges:

— that all survivors of Mother and Baby Homes, County Homes, related institutions, unlawful or forced adoptions, and abuse in boarding out and adoptive placements deserve immediate and fair redress;

— the Report of the findings of the Consultation with Survivors of Mother and Baby Homes and County Homes, also known as the OAK Report, to which nearly 550 survivors contributed via written submissions or calls;

— the findings of the Annual Report of the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection 2021 on the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes;

— the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur's call, in November 2021, for compensation commensurate with the gravity of the offences, including the removal of any waiver which would prevent survivors seeking further recompense and legal accountability in court;

— the UN Human Rights Committee's call, in July 2022, for full and effective remedy to all survivors, removing all barriers to access, including short timeframes to apply to the redress schemes;

— the UN human rights experts' call, in September 2022, for redress for victims of racial discrimination and systemic racism in Irish childcare institutions;

— the recommendations contained in the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Report on pre-legislative scrutiny of the General Scheme of a Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill 2022;

— the High Court declaration, from December 2021, that the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes wrongly denied eight survivors their statutory right to comment on many draft findings;

— that religious orders and church bodies involved in Mother and Baby Homes, County Homes, and related institutions should contribute to the cost of the redress scheme; and

— that pharmaceutical companies who conducted trials with women and children in Mother and Baby Homes, County Homes, and related institutions should contribute to the cost of the redress scheme;

recognises:

— the grave and systematic human rights violations which were perpetrated in Mother and Baby Homes, County Homes, and related institutions, including suspicious and uninvestigated deaths, forced disappearances, torture or other prohibited ill-treatment, including on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity and class, forced labour and servitude, arbitrary detention, illegal adoptions, forced family separation, non-consensual medical trials, and arbitrary interference with family life, private life and freedom of expression;

— that the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes recommendations concerning redress are among findings which do not accurately reflect the survivors' evidence; and

— that there is a deep level of disappointment, distrust and anger among survivors at their treatment by the Government; and

calls on the Government to:

— ensure all survivors of Mother and Baby Homes, County Homes, related institutions, unlawful or forced adoption, and abuse in boarding out and adoptive placements receive redress;

— use the findings of the OAK Report as a basis for the redress scheme;

— remove the six-month time-based criteria to access the scheme;

—- revise the proposed payment rates to reflect the human rights abuses and trauma experienced by survivors, including all forms of forced labour;

— remove the legal waiver against further legal recourse against the State and non-State bodies;

— immediately appoint an independent expert to engage with survivors and their advocates/representatives to develop a survivor-centred and human rights-based redress scheme;

— appoint a human rights expert to examine testimony given to the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes;

— require religious orders and pharmaceutical companies to contribute to the cost of the redress scheme; and

— provide immediate interim payments to survivors while the redress scheme is being developed.

In mother and baby homes, there have been thousands of unexplained infant deaths, missing children, forced labour, the ripping apart of families, immoral medical trials, mass unmarked graves, young women, many of them children themselves, incarcerated because they were pregnant - sometimes non-consensually, their being victims of rape and incest - and the throwing of children and women into situations of abuse. So many imaginable horrors were perpetrated against some of the most vulnerable in our society. If British forces had committed these atrocities, there would be unending calls for justice. If we learned about these acts of evil happening in another country, we would rightly condemn the regimes responsible. However, because it happened here and was Government policy, perpetuated by the church, and because it is the result of our cruel humanity, there has been nothing.

For decades, survivors were denied even the acknowledgement of what happened to them. When we look at the entirety of the crimes, abuses and human rights violations, it is almost unimaginable in its scale, brutality and immorality. It was an intentional system designed to contain and punish single mothers. It penalised and abused them for being pregnant and for being women, Travellers, disabled or persons of colour. This was State policy and church strategy. Each Government between the 1930s and 1990s had a part to play in it and history is clear on what happened to the few people who tried to stand up for the rights of women and children.

Control, fear and silence were all central to this system. Sparse records were kept of infant deaths, illegal adoptions and incarcerations because the people responsible knew what was being done was wrong. Religious leaders, State officials and Ministers collaborated to hide and deny the truth for decades. These cover-ups became codified in law and practice. At all stages, these crimes and human rights abuses were intentional and the denial of justice and refusal of access to information or recognition were part of the same system protecting itself. Thousands of unnatural deaths are still not being investigated. Whole groups of survivors have been denied the dignity even of a meaningful apology, not to mention any form of redress. Information on illegal adoptions is still being covered up.

On paper, the Government looks like it is taking a different approach from that of its predecessors. It has introduced the Birth Information and Tracing Act and the Institutional Burials Act. From its press releases, it looks good. However, once we dig only a little deeper, it is clear it is just as committed to putting barriers in the way of justice and accountability and abetting those responsible. The Government and the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, have ignored the pleas of survivors again and again. The glaring errors and misuse of testimony in the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes are wilfully ignored and even defended. The Institutional Burials Act is designed to ensure Tuam will be the only mass grave ever excavated. The Birth Information and Tracing Act comes with barriers and limitations. At the same time, the religious orders and pharmaceutical companies are allowed to get away with murder.

The Government continues to facilitate the cover-up of crimes and human rights abuses and, most cynically and callously, it does so in full knowledge. The Minister knows the long history. He knows what survivors are asking for and what the public wants but he clearly seems not to care. His mantra seems to be to do just enough. He will do just enough for a good headline, just enough to look good and just enough to misrepresent the reality. This is just another form of abuse. Survivors are still being refused their rights. The basic tenets of our justice system have not been applied. Suspicious deaths, disappearances and sexual assaults are all going uninvestigated on purpose. The Minister's proposed redress scheme is the latest example of his approach to the issue. It is designed to give as little compensation to as small a number of survivors as possible. He is excluding people who spent less than six months in institutions as children, those who suffered forced family separation and those subjected to non-consensual medical trials. He is disregarding the wishes of survivors, international human rights bodies and the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Our motion is based on what many survivors have asked for, what human rights experts have said and what the Irish people want. We are calling on the Government to correct the findings of the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, pay compensation proportionate to the suffering caused and hold the church and the State to account. No one I talk to disagrees with this. These are the most basic elements needed for any form of justice, yet the Government is refusing to do any of them.

The most sickening aspect of the mother and baby homes report was the findings that exonerated the church and State by claiming all of society was to blame. Of course, if everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame and survivors can never get justice. This is a deep insult to those who suffered and still suffer today. It gives the Government cover to push through a pathetic redress scheme that excludes so many survivors and ignores the reality of illegal adoptions and other crimes. What about now? When those same people are being denied basic justice again, will the Minister blame society once more? Is it the fault of people watching today or people in Blanchardstown or west Cork? Are they to blame for this failure? When there is an inquiry into all of this in years to come, and that inquiry might conclude that "Oh well, those were the times", I want this debate to be on the Dáil record.

I do not know what the tactic of the week will be from the Government. Will it be to pass the motion and then ignore it or to vote it down? The Minister might let us know in his reply. Ultimately, it seems clear this motion will not achieve what we want it to achieve. At the very least, I hope people know many of us tried. I want people to know society does not agree with the Government on this. This utter disgrace is on the Minister. He knows the findings of the commission's report were inaccurate. Indeed, he called for an independent review before quietly abandoning it. The High Court case last year revealed the serious flaws in the report, not to mention the evaluation from the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection and other human rights experts. That flawed report is the justification for the Minister's disgraceful and exclusionary redress scheme.

He knows what survivors have gone through. He knows the scale and breadth of abuses perpetrated against women, children and infants by the State and the church. Yet, he is imposing arbitrary time limits with no basis in evidence, excluding people who suffered forced family separation, precluding those who were boarded out and choosing to deny the harm caused by forced labour, mistreatment, racial abuse and much more. His own consultation with the survivors and others, the OAK report, called for a universal, inclusive scheme that recognised the "loss of the mother child bond and relationship which was reported to be the cause of widespread trauma and mental health issues for many survivors" and the harm caused by psychological, physical and sexual abuse, including degrading and dehumanising treatment endured in the homes. The practice of unvetted family placements through adoption, fostering or boarding out was also clearly identified, as well as racial and ethnic discrimination and non-consensual inclusion in medical trials. Moreover, the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection have sought an inclusive scheme that compensates all survivors of this system, with the removal of the time criterion and the legal waiver. Somehow, the Minister has decided to stick with the criterion of time spent in an institution. It is unbelievable.

Today, the Social Democrats are again joining the vast majority of Irish people in asking for accountability. Is any religious order or pharmaceutical company going to pay a cent to this scheme? Why is the Minister not pursuing them? Last week, we learned he is still in negotiations with religious orders. These are bodies that perpetrated horrific abuses, profited from vulnerable people and conducted unauthorised medical trials. Why is he not seizing property? Where are the arrests? The religious orders, in particular, are responsible for mass graves around the country. They are complicit in illegal adoptions and illegal vaccine trials, from which they profited. What is the Minister's response? It is to talk to them and go cap in hand to them as if it were the 1950s.

Can the Minister please explain why he cynically and cruelly commissioned a consultation with survivors only to ignore their wishes? Can he outline why he is purposefully disregarding the UN Human Rights Committee and several special rapporteurs? They have called for all survivors to receive compensation, the removal of time-based restrictions and the removal of any form of waiver. In other debates, the Minister has misrepresented the position of UN human rights experts, but their calls are black and white on this. Can the Minister elaborate on why he has rejected the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which are based on our detailed engagement with survivors, their advocates and human rights experts? Can he tell us why he is not pursuing religious orders and pharmaceutical companies for every penny they owe survivors and their relatives? Finally, can the Minister state for the record why he is committed to continuing the systematic abuse of these people?

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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There are at least three elements to redress, the first of which is acknowledging what happened to those to whom it happened as it is their truth. The second is holding those responsible to account. The third is financial compensation; not that financial compensation can redress some of the things that happened to people and how it traumatised their lives.

Survivors were asked to put their trust in the State to relive the most traumatic moments in their lives in the belief that their lived experiences would be heard and would bring about justice and change. That trust was abused, with their own testimonies labelled as "contaminated" and "unreliable" by the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. The commission decided that it alone knew the truth; denying the lived experience of survivors in the official narrative. It was paternalistic and cruel. The commission decided there was no evidence of women being forced to enter mother and baby institutions by the church or State authorities; no evidence of forced adoption, racial discrimination or children injured in vaccine trials; and very little evidence of physical abuse. The report is fundamentally flawed to the point of being an outright attempt to rewrite history. Yet, the Minister chose to base his redress scheme on that report, excluding people who were boarded out or put into abusive adoptive placements, those who were subjected to vaccine trials and those who spent less than six months there as a child. It ignores the lifelong impact of forced incarceration, forced adoption and family separation.

At a press conference announcing the redress scheme, the Minister was asked about children who were left out of the scheme. He stated that "children who were in for less than six months would not have been aware of their experiences, would have been too young to remember their experiences." I wonder why we even have maternity leave when one considers that kind of thinking. Those few months are really critical in human development. I do not believe the Department understands early childhood trauma because if it did, this would not be put forward. Those people were not excluded from the scheme due to the lack of understanding; they were excluded because of costs. It seems like the primary lesson the State has learned in the past is not how to better conduct a redress process, but how to limit the cost to the State. There is a narrative here.

There were 13 unlicensed vaccine trials carried out on approximately 1,135 children from the institutions. Pharmaceutical companies like GlaxoSmithKline knew these children were being used as guinea pigs. They were treated as lesser than children who had parents or guardians to speak up for them and advocate on their behalf. These companies have an absolute moral responsibility to acknowledge that, even at this at this very late stage. The idea that redress is not being sought from the religious institutions, or that it is being gingerly sought from them, is just not acceptable.

We might look at the properties that were owned and have been sold recently by the Sisters of Mercy. They sold more than 45 properties. A convent based beside Beaumont Hospital was sold to the HSE for €2.7 million. The State has paid the Sisters of Mercy more than twice as much cash as it received in redress from the previous redress scheme. Really, there are no exceptions to culpability in what is happening, and that retraumatises people.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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It can become overwhelming when we stop to consider the full enormity of what we are here to discuss today. That enormity is that for four fifths of just over the 100-year history of this Republic, a collusion of church and State saw fit to incarcerate en massewomen and girls of all ages and backgrounds, and young working-class boys, who committed no wrong other than to be in the way of a cruel war of morality that was waged upon them. This same collusion of church and State permitted vaccine trials to be performed on children within their horrid form of care. The church, with the full facilitation of the State, stole babies from their mothers, often at birth, and sold those children for profit to families in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, leaving a longing in those mothers that I cannot even begin to comprehend. The Minister must have met those mothers. These women went to convents day in, day out asking if they could have their children back. The Minister must have met them; I have. We are here today to discuss the form of redress that derived from a report that included, and let me be clear, false incarceration, beatings, medical experimentation and kidnap to name but some. These were crimes, regardless of who committed them or what cloak of religious order they wore. These heinous acts are crimes and the Government is saying nobody is culpable. It is not even close to being acceptable.

More cruel than the fallacy that nobody was to blame for these horrors is the Taoiseach's assertion that society itself was to blame. Let me challenge that. That is just an ahistorical version of history that shifts culpability from the State and the church for their very direct complicity in these crimes. When I say, "the State", I am very much referencing the same parties with which the Minister is in government today. The Taoiseach's party, Fianna Fáil, first came to Government in 1932 and although the counterrevolutionary abdication of State responsibility for basic provision to the church had already begun under Fine Gael's forebears in Cumann na nGaedheal, the grip of John Charles McQuaid's Catholic Ireland was strengthened by de Valera’s Fianna Fáil. Society as a whole does not hold or bear responsibility for that. At no stage were the people of Ireland consulted about the transfer of State provision in health, education and welfare to the church. They were not consulted. More than that, society was never consulted and was not an architect in the system of containment that resulted in mother and baby homes, Magdalen laundries, asylums and institutions. People certainly may have been scared of ending up in one but they were not complicit in that.

At its very basis, that is what these ex gratiaschemes are about. This is about the form of history we allow ourselves to tell about the history of Ireland. It suits the narrative of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and others to have a very plain, linear narrative in this country with regard to our history that at one point: we took up arms against an overseas oppressor and that was the extent of it. We can fight over who owns it. Rather, what did independence mean for the average working-class woman, man and child in this country? That is what these ex gratiaschemes are about. The Government is going to pay women who suffered extraordinary wrongs. The Government is going to pay them and for that payment, it is going to demand that they seek no more justice or truth. The absolute antithesis of restorative justice is the retraumatisation of victims. The Minister has met those victims, as have I. They are telling the Minister that the system being inflicted on them, whereby they will get paid and must seek no more justice, is cruel. It is simply not acceptable. It cannot be. We have to be better than that.

The Minister has become a custodian of this history because of his place in government at the minute and because of the responsibility that has been laid before him. We ask the Minister today whether he will become complicit in that. Does he just become another brick in the wall of that cruel system of containment; that architecture of horror that locked people up who did no wrong en massein this country? Does he allow them to tell their truth or does he tell them to seek justice or truth no more? He is a custodian of that now and he gets to be responsible for those histories.

Let me ask the Minister about the children who have been excluded from these schemes because they did not spend six months or longer in the mother and baby homes. Did those children not suffer forced family separation or disappearance? Did those children, who are now adults, not suffer psychological trauma and harm? Did they not also suffer from vaccine experimentation, lack of supervision, the vetting of their families, physical harm and injury? If a child was in an institution for five months, did he or she not suffer that trauma? Do they not also get to seek justice and get a form of reparation?

We have to wrap our arms around the women and children who have suffered in this country, in the true history of this country, not drag them through a system and tell them to be silent. We have to be better than that. Our Republic does not emerge while we cover up the horrors of our past. The Minister is now responsible for that. I ask him to be better.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I welcome the opportunity to address the issues raised in this motion. Everyone here will agree that the State, together with the religious congregations, must acknowledge the indisputable wrongs that were visited on the women and children who spent time in mother and baby and county home institutions. As the Taoiseach said in his apology on behalf of the State in January of last year, they should not have been there and the shame is ours, not theirs. Throughout my two years in this role, I have worked to progress the State’s response to mother and baby institutions, mindful of the decades of complicity and inaction that have marked the State’s involvement in mother and baby institutions and their legacy. I know how deep that legacy runs, and the very personal pain and trauma that so many of our citizens endured. I have met many survivors over the past two years. I have had many people approach me and tell me their own experience in institutions, and the impact it has had on them. The different impacts of time spent in these institutions is impossible to disentangle and there are no easy answers when it comes to trying to remedy the grief and anguish. For each survivor of these institutions, the experience has had a unique and deeply personal impact.

It is not possible to monetise the suffering or the losses experienced in any payment scheme. It is also not possible to provide one remedy by way of compensation to all and for all, nor is it sufficient to do so. The Government’s Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby and County Homes Institutions aims to provide an enduring response to the priority needs of all those concerned. The action plan, which recognises that redress means different things to different people, spans significant commitments across the areas of apology; access to personal information; health supports; financial payments; memorialisation; records, archives and databases; education and research; and dignified burial. Delivering on these commitments for survivors is a priority for myself and for the Government, with eight of the 22 commitments achieved and intensive work under way on many others.

First and foremost, the Government has ensured that counselling support is available to all survivors free of charge and with prioritised access. The Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022 became law in June, and from 3 October statutory information and tracing services under the Act opened, guaranteeing people a long overdue legal right of access to their birth and early life information. After two decades of promises, this Government has finally delivered full and unredacted access to identity rights for adopted people and those who were boarded out. In the first two weeks, over 4,000 applications have been received under the new Act. In July the Institutional Burials Act 2022 also became law, and the Government approved my proposal to establish an independent office to lead an intervention at the site of the former mother and baby institution in Tuam. The treatment of children’s remains in Tuam is a stain on our national conscience. My hope is that this process will deliver answers that can bring some solace to the families who have been so deeply affected by this abhorrent situation. In March, the Government approved proposals for a national centre for research and remembrance. The centre will stand as a site of conscience, and will be a national memorial to honour equally all those who were resident in mother and baby homes, industrial schools, reformatories, Magdalen laundries and related institutions. It will comprise a museum and exhibition space; a research centre and repository of records related to institutional trauma in the 20th century, which will form part of the national archives; and a place for reflection and remembrance. The site for this centre, at Seán MacDermott Street, has already been transferred from Dublin City Council to the Office of Public Works.

Deputies will also be aware that I secured Government approval last week for the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill. Following its publication by the Bills Office, I will present this to Dáil Éireann next week. The scheme set out in the Bill, which is the largest of its kind in the history of the State, is nevertheless just one element of the overall Government response. The redress scheme proposed goes far beyond what the commission proposed, and, indeed, what was proposed by the interdepartmental group established to draw together a scheme. The commission recommended that pregnant women who entered mother and baby homes or county home institutions before 1974 would be eligible. We have gone beyond that recommendation, to ensure that the scheme includes all women who were resident in an institution at any point. The commission recommended that only children who were unaccompanied in a mother and baby home or county home institution would be eligible for a payment. We have gone beyond that recommendation, and the scheme will now include all children who were resident in a mother and baby home or county home institution for more than six months. The commission recommended a scheme in which 6,500 people would benefit, at a total cost of €400 million. We have gone substantially beyond that. The proposals contained in the State scheme will benefit 34,000 people, at a total cost of €800 million. Some 19,000 former residents will receive enhanced medical cards. It will be, in terms of numbers of beneficiaries, the largest redress scheme in the history of the State, recognising the huge impact of these institutions on Irish society.

For children who spent very short periods of time in an institution during their infancy, the Government’s action plan provides a response to their needs through the Birth Information and Tracing Act and the investment which has been made in new services under that Act. The legislation provides guaranteed access to birth certificates, as well as wider birth and early life information for those who have questions about their origins. This is the overwhelming priority need which has been expressed by people who as children were adopted or otherwise separated from their birth family. The Act also supports contact and family reunion by establishing a statutory tracing service and a contact preference register.

Since the Government approved the institutional payments scheme proposals, I have made further enhancements. I have improved the overall payments approach by introducing more refined payment bands that will benefit many applicants to the scheme. Previously, a person who was in an institution for five years and one month would have received the same payment as a person who was there for five years and 11 months. Under the new banded system, the person who was in the institution for five years and 11 months will receive a proportionately higher payment, recognising the longer period. I have also introduced a feature in the calculation process that will include periods of temporary absence of up to 180 days in the records of some applicants, enabling a more just approach for those impacted. It would be unjust to deny or limit access to the scheme on the basis that a person was absent from the instruction because they spent time in a hospital as a result of an illness contracted due to the appalling conditions in the institution. The scheme will recognise harsh conditions, emotional abuse and all other forms of harm, mistreatment, stigma and trauma experienced while resident in a mother and baby home or county home institution. However, in keeping with the views of survivors as expressed in the consultation process, the scheme will be non-adversarial with a low burden of proof. Applicants will not have to bring forward evidence of abuse, harm or mistreatment in order to benefit from the scheme. Rather, a general payment approach, based on time spent, will allow the State to shoulder the burden of proof and seek to ensure this scheme causes no further harm or trauma.

I am acutely aware of the need to deliver this scheme as swiftly as possible so that benefits can be accessed by many thousands of survivors and former residents. As the Bill travels through the Houses, I know I can count on the goodwill and good intent from all Deputies and Senators so that we can complete the legislative process promptly. In parallel with finalising the legislation, the significant work required to establish the scheme is under way. This work includes establishing an independent executive office, based out of my Department, to respond to applications and administer the payments. I want to assure survivors that we will be doing everything in our power to deliver the scheme as quickly as possible and to prioritise applications from older and more vulnerable survivors.

In closing, I would like to pay tribute to the immense resilience, courage, patience and constructive engagement of survivors and their supporters as the Government continues to work though these complex issues. No amount of money, legislation or memorialisation can ever truly undo the hurt that was done by these institutions. However, by vindicating the identity of people who were adopted or subject to illegal birth registration, by ensuring that the remains of the children buried at Tuam receive a respectful reburial and by bringing forward a payment scheme that will benefit 34,000 former residents, we are humbly acknowledging the State’s duty to atone for these appalling wrongs and seeking to rebuild the relationship of trust with the people who were so grievously wronged.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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Every parent knows about milestones in their children's first two years. They know about the importance of them.

They know when they are meant to hit particular developmental targets. They await the targets anxiously and burst with pride when their children meet the targets. This is ingrained into every parent but it is also ingrained into every children's medical specialist. It is through these milestones and timelines that we can ascertain how a child is developing, whether there are any difficulties or issues and how the child is growing. These milestones are based on science, evidence and clinical evidence. The Minister has created another milestone with this redress scheme. It is an arbitrary milestone that is not based on any science or evidence. It goes against every single bit of scientific knowledge that we have about children's development. It also flies in the face of Government policy.

By excluding children under six months from this scheme, the Minister is essentially saying that what happens in the first six months of their lives does not matter. He said, "children who were in for less than six months would not have been aware of their experiences, would have been too young to remember their experiences." That goes against everything we know. If one looks at the HSE website, one will be informed that by the age of one month, children are starting to develop socially and emotionally. Babies are getting to know you and to bond. By the age of three months, they give warm smiles and laugh. They enjoy looking at your face. By the age of six months, they get upset when they cannot see their main caregivers. The Minister is saying that does not count and does not matter. He said that people can essentially do what they want to babies under six months of age, because they will not remember and it will not make any difference to them. The Minister launched the First 5 programme, which states that "Time together with parents especially in the first year" is so important for children. It does not refer to time with parents in the seventh to 12th months, but to the first year, because it is based on science. I have serious concerns about a Minister with responsibility for children who does not understand the developmental and psychological needs of children.

The Minister's policies for the redress scheme are contradictory to his other policies and to what we know about childhood trauma. It is not that this has not been raised with the Minister. A group of psychologists contacted him to explain this to him and to say that everything he is doing with this is wrong. As a public representative, and particularly as a mother, I know that this is retraumatising. I know and science knows how important those six months are. The Minister is saying those six months do not matter. I do not understand how he can completely ignore experts, scientific advice and his own policy in this regard.

The Minister needs to go back to look at this scheme again. He cannot exclude people based on that six-month rule. Not only is he excluding their experiences within those six months, but he is also completely ignoring what happened to them after the six months, with the shame, the trauma, the fear of not knowing what their future held, and the sense of isolation and feeling alone due to not knowing who their mother was and not knowing what their names are. That would stay with people whether they were in the home for six months or for six years. The Minister is ignoring that. He will retraumatise many survivors. Some 40% of survivors were in a home for less than six months.

I want to make a point about the Minister's speech. He said all the right things. I listened and said to myself that he gets it. We need to see the Minister do the right things. What is written in the speech does not matter if he does not put this into action and make sure that all survivors are heard when it comes to this issue.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I thank my colleague Deputy Cairns for tabling this motion. I will take up the point that Deputy Whitmore made. It is profoundly worrying and disturbing that the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Minister do not seem to understand the importance of the early stages of childhood development up to five or six months. One would have thought that, of all the Departments, such an understanding would be ingrained in the thinking of the Minister's Department. When we meet children of homeless families who are in emergency accommodation, we see what a profound impact a number of months can have on them in their early development. It can cause childhood trauma and have an impact throughout their lives. For that not to be fully acknowledged and understood by the Department and the Minister is disturbing and worrying. In the Minister's comments today, he spoke about how children who were resident in mother and baby homes for more than six months would be included. He said that children who spent very short periods in an institution would be excluded. To dismiss four, five or six months as a very short period in infancy is wrong. It is a long time in a child's development, not a short time. That is something fundamental, which we all need to understand and recognise.

This was an opportunity to do the right thing and to cast away the shameful practices of the past, when the voices of survivors of mother and baby homes were not fully listened to. It was an opportunity to break with the power structures that treated people as if they were invisible, to end the grave injustice that was done to thousands of survivors, and to end the practice of othering, shaming and excluding people. It was an opportunity to treat people with the dignity and respect that they deserve, as equal citizens of this Republic, and to respect their human rights and fundamental dignity. It is disappointing that the opportunity to do that has not been taken. This excludes people from a redress scheme when mother and baby homes were all about exclusion, segregating people from Irish society, making them invisible and putting them in a place where they would not be seen in the hope that they would be out of sight and out of mind for mainstream society.

The redress scheme is trying to tackle some of the harmful effects of that societal exclusion and segregation. To exclude people is fundamentally wrong. I do not know how the Government can stand over that exclusion, especially when this redress scheme should be seeking to address, to some degree, some of the harmful effects of people being excluded and segregated. The thinking where people are excluded, put out of sight and out of mind, is continued in the thought process of the redress scheme. People were exploited by the fact that they were segregated from society. They were exploited through forced family separation, kidnappings, forced medical trials and forced vaccination trials without consent. Assault is another abuse that happened. The segregation and exclusion were exploited and to carry on with them is shameful.

We did not hear from the Minister about why the June 2021 commitment to appoint an international human rights expert to re-examine the testimony given to the mother and baby homes inquiry was dropped. We and every survivor deserve to hear a full explanation of why that was dropped. The commitment that was given needs to be reinstated and acted on by the Minister.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Social Democrats for tabling this motion and giving us an opportunity to discuss the mother and baby institutions redress scheme.

The make up of the scheme is very disappointing. It is exclusionary rather than inclusive. People who were resident in mother and baby institutions for six months or less are deeply disappointed and distressed to find out that they remain excluded from the scheme. Inclusion and equality are clearly missing from the proposed scheme. It seems to be more about achieving reduced costs and reduced liability. What it has achieved is an increased mistrust among survivors, which was already high as a direct result of their appalling treatment by successive Governments. Provisions seeking to deny or limit liability by the State or other private entities should not be included in this legislation or in the payment scheme. It is simply not good enough. It is time for this Government to respect all mother and baby home survivors and families.

It is also vitally important that the relevant religious congregations and pharmaceutical organisations do not avoid accountability. They must contribute significant finances to fund the scheme. Substantive recourse from these bodies needs to be insisted upon immediately. It is time that religious institutions and pharmaceutical companies are forced to compensate survivors for the harm and suffering they caused.

There is no recognition of the hurtful trauma experienced by children separated at birth from their mothers. The exclusion of children resident in a home for less than six months is a dereliction of the State’s responsibility to all survivors. The recommendations and views shared by survivors conducted by Oak Consulting have been largely ignored. The concerns raised by Dr. Niall Muldoon, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, in a report commissioned by the Minister are not reflected in the redress plans either. The UN special rapporteur, UN Human Rights Committee and UN human rights experts have individually called for appropriate compensation, removal of legal waivers and for any scheme to address child victims of racial discrimination within Irish institutions from 1940 until the 1990s. These calls have also been largely ignored. This is totally unacceptable. It is time to change the redress scheme to meet the needs of survivors and families.

What this current scheme does is effectively create a hierarchy of suffering. We know the majority of survivors spent six months or less in a mother and baby home or county home. The commission’s authors state this. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, is calling for the legislation to be amended to remove the requirement of a six-month stay to ensure that all children who were resident in a relevant institution and-or were adopted are eligible to apply to the scheme.

The Minister's rowing back on appointing a human rights expert to examine testimony given to the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes is unacceptable. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties wrote to the Minister setting out exactly why this is essential. The Minister has once again ignored this plea. Instead he has opted to introduce a new initiative to support survivors to tell their personal stories so that they can be formally recorded and accepted as part of the official record.

While we welcome the development of a national site of remembrance and interpretation, as proposed for Seán MacDermott Street, new testimony will not remedy the problem that came to light in June 2021 that the vast majority of the evidence given by survivors to the commission was not effectively considered. An independent examination of the testimony given to the commission is vital to ensure justice is done because a human rights legal expert will be able properly to assess whether there is evidence of human rights abuse and potentially crimes that must be investigated in the original testimony given by survivors.

The gathering of stories outside of a formal legal process does not meet Ireland’s human rights obligations to ensure truth, justice and accountability under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ICCPR, the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR, and our Constitution’s protection of due process and fair procedures. No justice can be delivered if the evidence never comes to light or is maintained in a parallel system of evidence gathered outside a formal legal process.

All those affected need to be treated equally and fairly regardless of how long they spent in an institution. It does not matter what age a person was when he or she was removed from their families. It has had an impact on him or her. The Government must respect all mother and baby home survivors and families. It must change the redress scheme to meet the needs of all survivors and families and it must force religious institutions and pharmaceutical companies to contribute significant finances for the compensation of survivors and families.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Deputies for tabling the motion and giving us the opportunity to debate an incredibly important issue. It had not been my intention to speak but I looked for time to speak on behalf of two of my constituents. Many of my constituents are victims. As the Minister knows, there are many victims, many of whom will be excluded. One is a man who thinks he is aged 79; he does not know exactly how old he is because his records have been falsified. He lives in Balbriggan. He wants to know who he is and where he came from and who his family is - all the basic information that we take for granted. He tells me that he felt as though he was shoved to one side, put in a box so that people could not see him, would not hear from him and would not have to think about where he was from or the circumstances of his birth. He talks of the shame associated with coming from the county home and how he was viewed by other people in his community. The other constituent is also a man. I will not name either of them because God knows they have been treated badly enough without parading their names through the House. He showed me his arms and some of his side where he had been injected as a baby and there had been some sort of infection. Arising out of that he was left permanently scarred. This is a man in his 50s. He talks about the shame, the exclusion and the feeling of being outside and wanting to be brought inside and feeling that society wanted to other him and put him somewhere out of sight. That gets right to the heart of what is missing from the scheme. The fact is that 70% of survivors effectively stayed for six months or less and that means they are going to be excluded. That is a huge number of people whom the Minister claims he wants to help, does not want to ignore and wants to support, who are in fact going to be excluded. That is shameful. He can address that. I would give him the benefit of the doubt actually. I would not say he is unaware of the importance of the first six months of a child's life. I would say he is acutely aware of its importance and that makes what he is doing worse. He is not ignorant of what he is doing. He is doing it to limit the cost and because it is politically expedient to do it. He is also doing it so that he can stand in the House and say that something is being done when he knows that effectively people are going to be excluded. The opportunity now presents for him to have another look at this, to take on board what victims and survivors are saying to him, to take on board the anger and hurt that is felt and take some action to make the scheme fit for purpose.

Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Social Democrats for tabling the motion. I also acknowledge all the work that the Minister has done over the past number of years in this regard. The issues with the report, the redress scheme and access to testimony and other data are well known at this point. The fact that claims are still to based on length of time rather than the degree of abuse or other factors is worrying. The most recent revelation regarding the pharmaceutical tests is also worrying. Those horrific practices have been part of the recent past too. We remember that the organs of dead babies were sold off to pharmaceutical companies without the consent of the parents not too long ago.

According to the Tusla report in 2020, there were 69,000 referrals to child protection and welfare services that year. There were 5,882 children in care at that time with 90% in foster care and 450 in residential care, yet recently in the budget there was no increase of any significant amount for the foster carers who shore up the system and keep it afloat. The State has a duty to all those who by accident of birth found or find themselves in desperate circumstances. I also want to refer to - and the students who are here from the Intermediate School in Killorglin will be interested to hear about - the boarded-out children. I mention two boys, James and Michael Sugrue, who were left at the mercy of the State and suffered horrendous childhoods. They were boarded out from the county home in Killarney, County Kerry. James was aged eight and Michael was seven. The State had a duty of care to these children but sent them to work and allowed them to work in servitude. "You are here to work", they were told. They were sent to a house that had no lighting and no heating. They were not properly fed.

There were not adequate inspections. James said he was physically and sexually abused over many years. He was then failed by social workers. His school and Kerry County Council declined him a grant for further education. That is the legacy of the State.

James went to Hammersmith and made a life for himself in England but Michael was not so fortunate. He suffered with addiction and mental health issues and was found dead in Crystal Palace, south London in 1993.

Later in life, James was forgotten by every redress system. He was not recognised and was denied a full Garda investigation. At every hand’s turn, he was told, "There is nothing we can do." There is still no apology and nothing for those children who were boarded out. Having listened to James, why is he still being ignored? Back in January 2021, the Minister said that people have waited too long for recognition. He stated:

...the State will engage with empathy, humility and generosity with those who were wronged [and] will strive to rebuild the trust so grievously shattered.

James is asking still to this day to put an end to this "eternal atonement", as he calls it, and an end to the turbulence in his life.

Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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As the Minister knows, I am on the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth with Deputy Cairns. I thank her for tabling this important motion.

The mother and baby homes are a dark stain on the history of the State. I am on the committee that was tasked with the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. Listening to the testimonies at the committee of those who were personally affected was absolutely heart-wrenching. I met several survivors and it was very traumatising for me to hear their experience, and I was not the person who had to through the experience that they had to.

Their experiences must be validated. The exclusion from the redress scheme of infants who spent less than six months in a mother and baby home tells me that survivors have not been listened to. This is one of the things that survivors called for. Infants were taken from their mothers; they were stolen and, in some cases, they were shipped overseas. The Government is effectively telling these children that their forced separation and suffering is not worthy of compensation and telling women that their suffering will not be validated. This is an absolute scandal.

Will the Minister explain the rationale as to why children will only receive a general payment if they were in an institution for six months or longer? We heard an expert witness testimony at the committee as well who stated: "All who passed through mother and baby homes have been affected and these experiences will have shaped and influenced childhood and adult development." That is regardless of whether someone spent one day, six months or six years in a home. She continued:

...the impact is still relevant and applicable. It is not about the time which someone spent in one of these homes; it is about the quality and nature of the experiences there. Indeed, children who experienced this at six months or younger are arguably the most affected because of the experiences around brain development and growth at that time.

This is not from me; I am not an expert. The expert at the committee went on to state: "It is not true to say that we can break it down in terms of timeframe being used [by the Government] as a measure of impact."

It is time to respect all mother and baby home survivors and families and to change the redress scheme to meet their needs. The scheme that the Minister has proposed will not allow many people to move on from being victims of the mother and baby home institutions to becoming survivors of them. That is the very least that they deserve.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I want to thank the Social Democrats' Members for tabling this motion. Unfortunately, they should not have had to do this. We are coming back here time and time again. My colleague, Deputy Funchion, tabled a motion some months ago quite similar to this. We keep coming back to the same issue, which is that this legislation is exclusionary. Even at this stage, we are excluding people. We have to stop and think what we are doing. When some of these horrific things were done to these children and mothers, some people can proclaim that they did not have full knowledge so they did not know. However, now we have the full knowledge and we know what we are doing. We have to go back and do this right.

The particular thing that sticks in my neck is the fact that we are saying that babies under six months of age do not matter and what happened to them in those six months does not matter. Yet, we have all kinds of evidence now and everything else to say that the first six months, and even before that, of a child’s life is crucially important. What happened to these babies in the first six months of their lives is important. We need to stand up and acknowledge that it is important. We need to show how important it is by doing the right thing in this situation. It is crazy; it is just six months. Why not seven, five or eight months? It has to stop here today. I hope that the motion will have the effect of stopping that. It is past time to respect all of the mother and baby home survivors and their families.

The people who are watching this debate today who spent less than six months in these institutions are adults now. They are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers. They all have children as well who are impacted. We have an intergenerational impact from what has happened to these babies. That is why we have a responsibility. Those are the ones who survived. When we talk about this, we always have to remember the ones who did not survive, such as the 796 children who died in Tuam and whose lives were taken away. We have to remember them.

I want to acknowledge Seosaimh Mulchrone from Aughagower, Westport, County Mayo who was born in a mother and baby home and has climbed Croagh Patrick seven times this year to remember those children because he needed to make sure that they are not forgotten and the suffering that they and others went through is not forgotten. Of course, none of us would be where we are without Catherine Corless and the wonderful work that she has done and, indeed, others who are carrying that on, such as Valerie Jennings in Mayo. I just want to acknowledge what they have done as well.

Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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I also thank the Social Democrat for tabling this important motion. However, it has come to the stage where I kind of dread getting up here and talking about mother and baby homes because so many of the people who were excluded from our society back in the dark old days of the State are still being excluded by the Government’s proposals. At the time of their first exclusion, their behaviour was perhaps too high a price for our prim and proper society and our respectability - we had our own morality police stalking the streets - even if that behaviour was sometimes just getting raped. Now they are being excluded again. Their inclusion is too high a price financially for a Government that goes to great lengths to present itself as righting wrongs. In truth, it is underwriting the wrongs done to these women and their children in its bullheadedness in reducing costs and liability for the State.

I told the Minister previously that he drew short straw. He and his party have had to clean up the way successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments put away women and children. Now, when the State has a chance to look after them, the stooges in their Departments are looking at the liability instead. There are billions of euro to splash around in overruns and billions to euro given to the private sector to provide public services, but there is not enough money for the women and children who were abused by the State. This must change immediately.

The exclusion of children in an institution for less than six months is not just neglect; it is vindictive. It is completely lacking the understanding of the early days of a child’s life. The last time I spoke on this I told the Minister about Mary, who spent less than six months in Bessborough. Her mother took her home, but she was called names all through school. She was reminded that her mother had her outside marriage, as if that was something shocking. She left her village and never told a single person about her earlier life. She asked me to ask the Minister a question last time about the babies aged under six months in Tuam and whether the Government would bother to exhume them or not or just leave them in the septic tank. It was a rhetorical question and she was not expecting an answer. However, the Minister replied in his summary, which shows that it just did not hit home for him.

The commission’s authors state that 70% stayed six months or less. This means Mary was not alone. No money can ever compensate for the trauma. No sum of money, millions or billions of euro, can ever make up for the separation of child from his or her loving and devastated mother. However, as a mere token of remorse and sorrow in a desire to restore, money can recognise the wrong that was done.

Drawing the short straw does not get the Minister off the hook.

He has to be able to take on the protection of the status quoin his Department. Change the system and change the scheme.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Thank you, Deputy. Next is Deputy Sherlock.

Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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I commend the Acting Chairman on her running of proceedings and keeping us all on time.

I support the motion and am glad it has been tabled by the Social Democrats. I note the motion put forward by that party on 24 February 2021, to which the Labour Party tabled an amendment relating to medical cards. The amendment was accepted and the motion, as amended, agreed to by the House. The amendment called on the Government to issue an enhanced medical card to all survivors who presented to mother and baby homes for any length of time, including while pregnant or on a post-natal basis. That motion has been passed by the Dáil. With the announcement of the scheme, there now seems to be a rowing back on that democratic position that was taken.

In the context of the publication of the questions and answers document relating to the mother and baby institutions payment scheme, it is important that we convey to people that the scheme is not up and running and that it requires the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill 2022 to be passed before it comes into operation. Many Deputies are being contacted by people who think the scheme is up and running and it is important that a message goes out to clarify that it is not yet in operation. The publication of the questions and answers paper has given the impression that the scheme is in place. There is a need to clarify for the public, especially survivors, that it is not yet in existence.

Like everybody else, I am perplexed as to why there is such an arbitrary cut-off point with regard to babies below six months of age. I can only surmise that the Minister and the Department have put some quantifiable monetary value on the cost of compensation or redress that would significantly increase the overall cost beyond €800 million that is allocated. I can think of no other reason the Government would act in such an arbitrary way in respect of babies aged less than six months. The Minister stated:

The commission recommended a scheme in which 6,500 people would benefit, at a total cost of €400 million. We have gone substantially beyond that. The proposals contained in the State scheme will benefit 34,000 people, at a total cost of €800 million. Some 19,000 former residents will receive enhanced medical cards.

If I am interpreting the scheme correctly - I am open to correction in that regard - the Minister is saying that for mothers who spent less than three months in a mother and baby home or a county home institution it is €5,000, for mothers who spent between three and six months it is €10,000, and there is then a €1,500 work payment for mothers who qualify in that regard. That means the total amount for those who qualify for the general payment and the work payment is €11,500. What I am trying to convey, possibly awkwardly, is that I do not understand the quantum for babies between birth and six months and whether there is a value put on that. When I say "value", I am asking whether the Government kicked the tyres from a financial perspective when it was doing the financial calculations and came up with a figure of €800 million. How much extra would it have cost the State to include babies between birth and six months? I am not an accountant and I do not want to sound like one. Ultimately, the point I am making is that the fact that a person spent a period in one of these institutions should, morally and ethically, be sufficient for the person to, at least, be given some recognition by way of redress for that period.

The Minister will present his Bill in the week of 26 October. There is still a sword of Damocles hanging over us in the context of the testimony of people who presented to the confidential committee. Respectfully, that has not yet been fully addressed by the Minister. He has stated previously that he is going to create an archive but it adds insult to injury if people who have presented to the confidential committee are now being told that testimony will be archived and housed elsewhere. There must be all sorts of difficulties in respect of the general data protection regulation, GDPR, and the ethics or lack of ethics when it comes to taking all of that information and putting it into an archive without going back to each person who presented to that confidential committee. They rightly feel aggrieved that their testimony was not treated with the respect it deserved. There are issues in that regard that still need to be dealt with in the context of the Bill that will be brought before us. I suspect that much play will made by members of the Opposition in respect of that issue because we cannot hive it off; we need to deal with it face on. We in opposition have consistently said that our generation of politicians needs to deal with this issue as comprehensively as possible. It is one of the issues that must be addressed.

The issue of GSK, formerly GlaxoSmithKline, has not yet been put to bed either. Dare I deign to give the Minister advice on what he should do? If I was in his position, I would call in GSK and tell the company that it needs to do more than apologise. I refer to the lack of ethics shown. This company still exists and all it has done is given an apology. There would be a moral obligation and responsibility on any pharmaceutical company to deal with an issue such as this. In the context of the vaccine trials alone, there also needs to be a greater degree of accountability and culpability from the religious institutions. I am repeating points that have been well made to the Minister. He will be acutely aware of all this and I know he will have internalised all of these complexities in his own thinking on the Bill that will come before us. However, I ask him not to forget that there is a moral obligation on companies such as GSK, particularly where they are IDA Ireland clients and have been the beneficiaries of significant supports from the State through the years. They have a moral obligation and there is leverage on the part of the Government to be able to flex its muscles in that regard.

The Labour Party supports the motion wholeheartedly and thanks the Social Democrats - I nearly said "the Progressive Democrats" - for bringing it forward.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I thank the Social Democrats for tabling the motion. It will be a comfort to survivors and campaigners that these issues are again being raised in the Dáil. There is an attempt by the Minister and the Government to say that outstanding issues and concerns of survivors have been dealt with, but that is not the case. It is a gross injustice that these issues are outstanding.

I wish to briefly address three of the outstanding issues and how painful they are, and show how the State continues to fail survivors and the women involved. First, there is the redress scheme and what we know of it. It continues to look like the work of a cold-hearted accountant whose chief job is to minimise the cost to the State. I hope I am wrong in that regard and that when it is debated in the House, the Minister will have listened to the women and survivors and experts and designed a scheme that does not draw an arbitrary line at six months spent in an institution or ignore those who were farmed out as forced labour, in effect, or suffered additional trauma from abuse as a result of their colour or ethnicity. By insisting on this, the Government is ignoring expert advice and the needs of thousands of people directly affected by the legacy of these institutions.

The Minister said the design of the scheme was based on a cold calculation of time spent in institutions and would ensure that survivors did not have to face a re-trauma of being called in and asked questions. That is very good but what about those who do not qualify and who have suffered trauma because of that, and believe me they do? The Minister needs to understand that their exclusion is re-traumatising. It is unconscionable and must be addressed.

The second issue is on the cost of the scheme. It may cost €800 million in total, with some 34,000 survivors being eligible but I question these figures and many have. I want to ask where the religious order and institutions are in their contribution to this. My argument here is not about saving the State money but is a fundamental issue of justice, redress and atonement for the wrong that was done.

I make no apology for repeating what I said last year. Those who bear particular responsibility for those centres, particularly the religious orders who ran them, should be made to pay for what they did. The Bon Secours Sisters ran the Tuam home. That order is now the second largest provider of private healthcare in the State, with revenue in 2019 of €314 million, including €5 million in public funding. In 2019, the HSE gave out more than €1.3 billion in public funding to services owned by five religious-owned healthcare facilities. In 2021, well over 90% of primary schools and a large majority of secondary schools remained under the control of the Catholic Church. Rather than giving them a slap on the wrist and a packet of public money, we should be seizing the assets of religious orders to fund the redress properly for all victims and move towards fully separating church and State.

My final point is tied to this. In designing the scheme as it stands, in ignoring the promise to have the testimonies reviewed by an independent expert and in refusing to expunge or amend the insulting passages and narrative of the commission’s report, the State and the Government are compounding the injury and historic injustices done. As with the failure to seek contributions from the religious orders to pay for the redress scheme, they add insult to injury by leaving unchallenged the official account of what has happened and leaving the gross and multiple inaccuracies contained in the report to stand.

The overwhelming impression of that report was that society and everyone in society was responsible for what happened in these institutions, and equally responsible. As someone said at the time, if everyone is responsible then no one is responsible and we have reached the logical conclusion here of that narrative. This is a redress scheme that seeks nothing from the orders who ran the homes, with a neutral and frankly inane promise to hear the testimonies again, but without any idea of restorative justice or holding the church and State to account. We essentially end up with the State shrugging its shoulders and saying it happened, so let us move on.

These institutions, the deaths in them, the forced labour camps, the beatings, the humiliations and the abuse did not just happen. It was not the natural outplay of a society at the time; these were worked for, planned for, defended, known at the time and justified by both the church and the State. They were resisted and fought against at the time by some by some women and children and even by many on the outside. Even some civil servants campaigned against them. Those who saw and knew and implemented what was happening were responsible and need to be made accountable and that is the church and the State.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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I want to talk about the mother and baby homes and the vaccine trials. According to reports, there were more than 1,000 babies and young children involved in these vaccine trials, that is 1,135 persons. Those babies and young children were taken from six mother and baby homes including Bessborough in Cork city. This happened between 1930 and 1973. There was no parental consent. The babies and young children were tested in these trials for vaccines relating to diphtheria, measles and four-in-one vaccines. Some of their mothers at the time of the trials were suffering from real mental health and psychiatric issues, and some of the children were Down’s syndrome children. The mothers were not present at the trials and the trials were in breach of the regulatory and ethical standards of the time. Those babies and young children were guinea pigs and there were real financial benefits from the companies which worked with the orders to organise those trials.

In passing, I make the point on the window that this provides into the reality of capitalism that would put profit above all else and use children in these vaccine trials without the consent of their parents in this way. The companies involved in the trials were Glaxo and Wellcome, companies which merged to form GlaxoSmithKline in 2000. That company has not paid one penny of compensation. Can the Minister say if that company has been asked for compensation? Has he called them in and asked them for compensation in this case? This company or companies have received large sums of money from this State in grant aid, where the IDA has been mentioned and so on, down through the years. It should make a very significant contribution to this redress fund. If it does not, the State should act to ensure that it does so.

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue and I compliment Deputy Cairns and the Social Democrats for introducing this motion.

As a Deputy living and based in Tuam, the Tuam mother and baby home has been a focus of attention over a number of years. The discovery of 796 babies buried in a mass grave is something that shocked the world. This watershed moment came when the very diligent work of Catherine Corless, a researcher, revealed what was happening in the site and what had happened in the past.

Over the years since I became a Deputy, I have met with and spoken to members of families who have had children or siblings there, or whose mothers were there in the Tuam home. I have also spoken to survivors of the home and have met some of the finest people that one would ever like to meet.

They built a resilience in themselves but at this stage they are beginning to tire because, when the discovery was made, there was an expectation that things would happen. I grant that former Minister, Ms Zappone, the current Minister’s predecessor, and the Minister himself have done enormous work in trying to get things done and it takes time to get things done. The redress scheme which is in place - I am receiving this feedback from many people representing mothers, babies and survivors, including the Tuam Mother and Baby Home Alliance - is one where there are issues which are not sitting comfortably with them.

The first thing people said to me when we had all of the discovery as to what happened in Tuam and in other places across the country was that the State should apologise. The State has apologised.

People were then talking about looking for supports to help people who had mental issues, were traumatised, and this trauma was re-visited on them when these events came into the public domain again. Many discoveries were made in families as a result of the good work Catherine Corless did.

There are three areas which are of serious concern. The first one, as one survivor said to me, is where these people had to serve their time of six months before they would be included in the scheme, as if one had to do one's apprenticeship first. The way it was put to me, which I believe is a good way, is that it is not so much how long one spent there, but what one's experience was when there. How did the person suffer and get on when in there and what legacy issues have been left with that person?

I do not think that is time-related. It is an experience, whether someone was a month or six years in a mother and baby home. There is something here that we need to address very urgently so that anybody who was in a mother and baby home will be considered to have had an experience for which they need support, which is a mild way of putting it, rather than cutting it after six months and saying they needed to have served that amount of time to get into a scheme. That is creating division and creating two tiers among people who are survivors or their families. That is very important.

I want to stress the area of medical trials. I note there were 13 vaccine trials over that period and over 43,000 children in Ireland were used for these trials, of whom almost 1,200 were from the mother and baby homes. In my estimation, we have had a lot of discussion in the last couple of weeks since the budget was announced around a levy on the construction industry to pay for the sins of people and of quarries that had the bad materials that caused mica or pyrite issues. However, we are not talking about a levy on anybody to try to pay for the redress scheme that is coming. It is important that we look at that. I think the Minister would get full support from across the House if a levy was put on the pharma industry to make sure it paid something towards what happened in the past. That would be more palatable than putting a levy on blocks and concrete at this time.

I know the Minister is talking to the religious orders. It is important that the discussions are concluded and the orders demonstrate in a tangible way that they are going to contribute towards the redress scheme - that it is not just talk and a soft landing. There are people who would say they have plenty of money. I do not know whether they have but I know they have plenty of property. At a time when we are looking for places in which to house people, they can be of enormous benefit to the State and they would also be doing something that would compensate for the ills of the past.

Looking to the future, no more than the situation in the construction industry, given the ills and how things went wrong in the past, the question is how we make sure things like this do not happen again. It is also about how we educate our children. I know the Tuam Mother and Baby Home Alliance is working with the university to try to create a teaching programme for today's children in order to educate them on what happened in the past and make sure it does not happen in the future. To be transparent is very important.

I have no doubt the Minister's efforts are 100% focused on getting things done, and done right. In my discussions with him, he is very much engaged and knows exactly what is going on. I appreciate all of that. However, there are a few things that we need to look at. It is not political or anything like that, but survivors need to know that they have the Minister’s backing, whether they were a day, a week, a month, six years or ten years in these mother and baby homes. I will leave it at that. I thank the Minister for his efforts.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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We move to the Rural Independent Group. I call Deputy Mattie McGrath.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward the motion. It is very important that we debate these issues in a sensitive manner. I appreciate the Minister's bona fides. The jury is out as to how it will end up, but it is obvious that the scheme is not fit for purpose. I do not know what is wrong with our departmental system that we cannot come up with sensitive and timely schemes. The six-month requirement is as if people were on six months’ probation, and if people were not there longer than that, they are out. That is very strange to me.

We need to conclude the negotiations with the religious institutions. I remember that Michael Woods, as Minister, made the first arrangements with them and, in fairness to the religious institutions, they have been getting bashed ever since, up and down the street. They were badly needed when they were there. Did everything go right? No. Were they all bad? No, and some great work was done there. We need to draw a line under this and stop bashing them and blaming them for everything else.

The victims, the people who suffered, must be the centrepiece here. I remember a young lady – fuair sí bás and she is gone now. Her name was Peggy. I did not know her all my life until she arrived back to mind her brother. She was a wonderful lady with a wonderful story. There are some great stories that come out from people who were in these institutions, came out and were accepted back into the community. They were looked after and nourished, and they flourished. As I said, it is not simple or easy. The Sean Ross Abbey people in my own county are there as well and Catherine Corless did great work.

Are we learning from any of those awful mistakes? We saw the near-calamitous issue in Killarney recently, where the system was transporting bus loads of people – in fact, I am not sure how they were going to be transported. This was a group of newcomers who had settled into the area and then, all of a sudden, at the stroke of a pen, they were sending them to Mayo. We do not seem to have learned. Now, we have one of the most vicious and pernicious abortion regimes of any country in the world. What trauma is that going to have on women going forward? We are falling over ourselves to be liberal but we must make haste slowly.

Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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It is important to bring forward this motion today. On 16 November 2021, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth published details of the mother and baby institutions payment scheme. At the time, the Minister stated that the legislation underpinning the scheme would be developed by the Department as a matter of priority. The Bill was eventually published on Monday of this week, 17 October 2022, almost one year on. This legislation will allow for the establishment of an independent executive office, housed within the Department, with responsibility for administering the scheme. The delay in publishing the Bill means it is now unlikely that the scheme will open for applications until well into 2023.

The establishment of the mother and baby institutions payment scheme is a centrepiece of the action plan for survivors and former residents of mother and baby county home institutions which seeks to implement commitments made by the Government in January 2021 to respond to the priority needs of the survivors. Following the findings of the OAK report in February 2021, the Minister established an interdepartmental group to develop detailed and costed proposals for the scheme. The interdepartmental group commissioned OAK Conflict Dynamics Limited to consult survivors and their representatives and the consultations took place between March and April 2021. The purpose of the consultations was to obtain the views of survivors, their families, representatives, advocates and other interested parties on what should be included in the proposed financial scheme, including a form of enhanced medical card. The majority of the stakeholders who participated in the consultation process support a universal, inclusive scheme. The largest proportion of written submissions stated that all mothers and their babies who resided in an institution for any length of time should be eligible for the redress, regardless of whether children were accompanied or unaccompanied by their mothers.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I appreciate and acknowledge the work of the Social Democrats on this very important motion and thank them for it. I too would like to welcome the people in the Visitors Gallery to Dáil Éireann.

It would be wrong for any of us to be debating or talking about this motion without again acknowledging, as we all rightfully do, the horror and awfulness suffered by the people in these institutions, the time they endured there, the effect it had on their lives, and the fact that many of them may be listening or watching today and taking into account every word that is being said here. It is so important to say how sorry we are that the State left those people down and that it hurt those people when they should have been in care and should have been nurtured and supported but, instead, they were hurt, damaged, harmed, abused and mistreated, and that is so wrong.

On behalf of the Rural Independent Group, I note that one of the key recommendations made by the committee is that the six-month residency requirement for children must be removed. The Rural Independent Group fully endorsed and supported this recommendation. We believe it is imperative that anyone who was resident in one of the institutions should be entitled to a payment, regardless of the time they gave there. That is so important.

It is not about the length of time people were there or whether they were farmed out. They might not have been in the institution at all, but they were still hurt where they went. They should have been under the care of the State, but they were not. For that, we are all humbly sorry. They were let down, they were left behind and they were harmed.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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I thank the Social Democrats for tabling this motion. There should be no more time wasted. The people of the mother and baby homes have suffered enough. It is time the redress scheme was introduced in recognition of what happened there.

I will tell the House a story. I visited a person - I will not say where - because I knew that this person was alone. The individual was a survivor of the mother and baby homes. I arrived at the house with a box of chocolates and flowers. The person looked at me with a blank face and asked why I was there. I just said that I was there to let them know that we were here for them and that they were not alone. I met the same person recently when they finally realised that they were being recognised in the redress scheme. They thought that they were getting somewhere. That person gave me a hug and a smile, and told me that they were getting their life back. However, they asked how many of their friends had died since the scheme's announcement. There has been delay after delay.

No more time can be wasted for those who suffered in mother and baby homes. It is time to get this done. It is time to get rid of the six-month requirement. It was a traumatic period for many. It is time the scheme was progressed and their suffering was addressed.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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Next is the Independent Group. Deputy Joan Collins is sharing time with Deputy Connolly.

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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I thank the Social Democrats for tabling this Private Members' motion. I endorse its calls to:

- ensure all survivors of Mother and Baby Homes, County Homes, related institutions, unlawful or forced adoption, and abuse in boarding out and adoptive placements receive redress;

- use the findings of the OAK Report as a basis for the redress scheme;

- remove the six-month time-based criteria to access the scheme;

...

- require religious orders and pharmaceutical companies to contribute to the cost of the redress scheme

These are important calls, but I only have a few minutes, so I will only make a point about one aspect.

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, recommends the removal of the six-month length of stay requirement for a person who was resident as a child in a relevant institution to be eligible to apply for the scheme. The six-month requirement is not an indicator of whether a child suffered harm, such as from the forced separation of mother and child. The IHREC is of the view that all survivors who were resident as children in relevant institutions for any length of time should be eligible to apply for the scheme. There have been numerous calls nationally and internationally for the redress scheme to be extended. The decision is at odds with the view of the group of 34 clinicians who argue that trauma should not have a six-month minimum applied to it. The UN Human Rights Committee and the Oireachtas committee on children are calling for the scheme to be extended.

Several UN human rights experts have criticised the Government's response to the systematic racism faced by mixed-race people who passed through State and religious institutions between the 1940s and 1990s. These experts believe that the Government has not sufficiently addressed this issue and that its planned redress scheme is inadequate.

Many survivors have been critical of the scheme, describing it as a cost-saving exercise. I agree with them. Mr. Joe McManus, who spent his early years in St. Patrick's mother and baby institution in Dublin, believes that people are being excluded from the new scheme, or are only eligible for small amounts, in a bid to keep costs down. Recently, he stated that the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and its redress scheme were defined by those reports that went before it. He said that the redress scheme set up following the Ryan report, which detailed the endemic sexual and physical abuse in many industrial schools and reformatories, cost the State in the region of €1.5 billion. He stated: "It's just sad that the most important lesson learned by the State [after the Ryan Report] was not what could be done for the casualties of the process, but how they could limit the financial cost."

When the Minister announced the Bill, I received a number of calls from people who were very distraught. He made the point that the shame was not theirs, but ours. If he doubles down on this Bill, though, the shame will be doubled down on as well.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta Cairns. The Social Democrats will forgive me if I do not thank them too much because I wish to use the remaining four minutes. However, I appreciate that they have given us this opportunity and put on the Dáil record the fact that there are voices in the House that care. I am not saying that the Minister does not care, but he has been captured by the mantra of the Department and the society that was portrayed in the final report of the commission of investigation. In his speech, which I listened to carefully and read, he spoke about the apology given by the Taoiseach, but let me set out what the IHREC and the UN have said about apologies. At the most basic level, public apologies have been placed on a statutory footing in other jurisdictions. The motivations for public apologies are:

generally both backward- and forward-looking, acknowledging past harms but also signalling a better future. The backward-looking elements include the taking of responsibility for past human rights violations, the honest acknowledgement of what occurred and naming the wrongness of those harms. The forward-looking components [which are missing in this instance] address the image of a "redeemed individual or nation", the beginning of a new era and a break from past cultures of violence, but also signal the social and political transformation required to ensure that such atrocities will never be repeated.

Will the Minister look at this description and see where his scheme fits into it? To me, it does not. The scheme is piecemeal and the Minister is doing a certain amount but going no further.

There are nine requests in this motion. They are the most basic requests. One of them is that we rely on the OAK consultation and what it found. One of the findings was that losing a child or losing the bond with a child was the most traumatic part. The Minister has excluded babies who were in institutions for less than six months. On reflection, what is his opinion on this provision? In his RTÉ interview, he called it the best approach, but on what is it based? I do not mean to be flippant, but I might as well ask why I spent six months of my life breastfeeding, minding and being up all night with two children if it did not matter? I say this with the greatest of respect to men and women. What was the point of me investing all of that love, which I regard as my duty as a mother, when it was all unnecessary? The child is a tabula rasaat nought and a tabula rasasix months later. The harm only starts after that. Trauma experts have written to the Minister. The cross-party committee has asked him to remove this provision, as has the IHREC, and the UN has serious difficulties with it.

When I look to see what transformative action is being taken, all I see are figures. The interdepartmental group told us that 24,140 people spent less than six months in a mother and baby home. Clearly, the Minister is excluding these people deliberately. He is the representative and I do not mean to personalise this at all, and I wish we could sit down and talk about how to do this right, given that it is a golden opportunity, but it is down in black and white that these people will be excluded. The scheme will exclude those who were boarded out. It will also not address the systematic racism that is being brought to our attention repeatedly by people who suffered from that racism and by the UN. On we go, though, and the Minister will come forward next week with another prepared script to put matters in perspective.

He congratulated himself that the scheme was much better than what the commission had recommended and that he had gone further than the commission in extending the scheme, including the times, but he did so without acknowledging something about the commission's conclusions. While I pay tribute to the body of the commission's work, its conclusions were absolutely without foundation. The Minister has admitted this, yet he is praising himself and basing his scheme on an extension of those faulty conclusions and recommendations. That any commission would describe testimony from survivors as "contaminated" begs serious questions about what was going on, as does claiming that their testimonies were not in accordance with the narrative without telling us what that narrative was. I grew up with the narrative and I knew what it was, namely, that "They knew best".

The institutions knew best, the priests knew best and the judges knew best. This was the narrative. This commission has perpetuated that narrative. I thank the Social Democrats. I hope, but do not think, this will be a momentous change and a way of saying enough is enough i ndáiríre agus tá gá le rud eile atá bunaithe ar chearta daonna ach níl dóchas agam beag ná mór.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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There has been a huge and entirely appropriate outcry in recent years over the shameful way some of our most vulnerable citizens were treated. We have all been moved by this. As the realisation deepens regarding how unfairly some of our citizens were treated in the past, we more fully understand that the effects continue to ripple through to today. We witness the pain felt so deeply by those who have not been able to access information about their origins or those who have succeeded in doing so but found the toll of the struggle to be substantial. We recognise the importance of lifting the veil of secrecy and honouring those who suffered because a misplaced sense of shame cast them aside when they most needed help and compassion. A veil of secrecy which enabled dignity and respect to be trampled upon for decades has been lifted.

As the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, set out for us, the Government's Action Plan for Survivors and Former Residents of Mother and Baby and County Homes Institutions outlines how the Government is responding to the painful legacy of these institutions in a holistic and wide-ranging way. The proposed mother and baby institutions payment scheme is just one part of this significant work. We have already heard some key updates from the Minister regarding other elements of the action plan. Two important pieces of legislation have already been passed, enacted and commenced this year. I refer to the Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022 and the Institutional Burials Act 2022. Both of these Acts are significant demonstrations of the Government's commitment to the delivery of a holistic response to this painful episode in our history. It is also important to emphasise that counselling support is available for all survivors and former residents of mother and baby home and county home institutions. It is free of charge and includes out-of-hours support, and survivors enjoy priority access. Proposals for the mother and baby institutions payment scheme were agreed and published alongside the action plan. The proposals for the scheme mean that in terms of estimated beneficiaries it will be the largest scheme of its type in the history of the State and will allow for an estimated 34,000 survivors to be eligible for financial payment and approximately 19,000 survivors to be eligible for an enhanced medical card.

The agreed proposals for the scheme, which have been reflected and strengthened in the proposed Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill 2022, were informed by an independently undertaken consultation with survivors' groups and an advisory paper from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC. Additionally, pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill took place between March and July 2022. Payments and supports under the scheme recognise time spent, harsh conditions, emotional abuse and all other forms of harm, mistreatment, stigma and trauma experienced while resident in a mother and baby or county institution. Applicants, however, will not have to bring forward evidence of abuse, harm or mistreatment to benefit from the scheme. Rather, the design of the scheme is predicated on being non-adversarial and as straightforward as possible, with the aim of mitigating the risk that applicants will be retraumatised by engaging with the process. To achieve this objective, the payments will be based on residency.

The payments schedule is designed so that those who spent most time in these institutions receive the highest levels of payment because, in the majority of cases, these were women and children who experienced the worst conditions for a prolonged time. In the Bill approved by the Government, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has made improvements on the original proposals. He has improved the overall payment approach by introducing more refined payment bands that will benefit many applicants to the scheme. He has also introduced a feature in the calculation process that will include periods of temporary absence in the records of some applicants, which will enable a more just approach for those impacted.

The Government believes all relevant parties have a collective responsibility to respond to Ireland's legacy in respect of the mother and baby situations. Discussions on seeking a contribution from the religious congregations towards the mother and baby institutions payment scheme are ongoing. The Government is fully committed to delivering this scheme as soon as possible and the Minister's Department is making the necessary arrangements to establish an executive office within the Department to administer the scheme. Once the legislation has been passed by the Oireachtas and the administrative infrastructure established, the scheme will be able to begin accepting applications.

I reiterate that this scheme should not be viewed in isolation as the State's sole response to Ireland's legacy concerning mother and baby home institutions. It is, of course, a very significant scheme and a centrepiece of the Government's action plan. Important work, however, has also been under way on all other aspects of this action plan, which aims to acknowledge suffering, provide support, rebuild trust and promote healing.

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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We have heard about the wide range of concerns and shortcomings regarding the proposed mother and baby institutions payment scheme. These concerns echo those raised by the survivor groups, which are yet again deeply disappointed by the failure to deliver on fair redress. The scheme falls far short of the absolute minimum required to begin to address the great damage done to those abducted and incarcerated in mother and baby homes. The scheme has many significant flaws, including that only 34,000 out of 58,000 survivors will be covered; that it fails to acknowledge the devastating impact of forced family separation; that children aged less than six months are not included; that forced adoption, fostering and boarding out are not covered; that racial discrimination of mixed-race children is not recognised; that payments are based solely on the length of time spent in an institution; that people must waive their rights to take legal action; that payments are ex gratia, meaning there is no accountability for abuse; that vaccine trials are excluded; and that no agreement has been reached for an equal sharing of responsibility and costs between the State and the congregations concerned.

Arguably, that last point is the most significant shortcoming of this payment scheme. The scheme completely fails to acknowledge the full and equal culpability of church and State for the egregious harm done to so many mothers and children during that dark period. There can be no coming to terms as a country with our past without proper accountability. It beggars belief that the Minister has not secured agreement from those religious orders that ran these homes and are largely responsible for the cruel regimes that inflicted such human rights abuses. Have any lessons at all been learned from the experience of the 2002 residential institutions redress scheme? We must wonder about this.

This was a redress scheme where we were told that the State and religious orders shared equal responsibility for the damage done to so many people in residential institutions. The religious congregations involved, however, pulled a fast one and persuaded a weak Minister to agree to cap their contribution at €127 million. The redress scheme, of course, ended up costing €1.5 billion, meaning the religious contribution was less than 10% of the total cost. I reiterate that it was less than 10%. So much for equal culpability. Not only that, but, shockingly, 20 years later the €127 million has not even been paid in full. This is incredible. Then, in 2009, on foot of further horrific revelations and the Ryan report, pressure came on the orders to increase their contribution. At that point, they offered to make a voluntary contribution of €352 million. This was 13 years ago.

Unbelievably, a mere €120 million of that amount has been paid to date. It is very disappointing, although I suppose not surprising, that the six religious orders which ran the mother and baby homes have yet to agree to contribute anything. Most people would argue that culpability as well as responsibility for redress should be equally shared. That, after all, is official Government policy. That is what the Minister must secure - a full equal share of the final cost from the orders concerned. If the Minister cannot achieve that, I believe that Government must consider repossessing those taxpayer-funded education and health properties for which those religious orders have assumed possession. It really is very hard to stomach some religious orders squirrelling away assets into trusts of various kinds when these were publicly funded properties. It is twice as hard to take that when the orders refuse to meet their moral obligations to provide redress for their wrongdoing and seek to put their assets beyond reach. Will the Minister do the right thing? Will he rethink this scheme? It is clearly not fit for purpose.

Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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Ms Mary Harney is a survivor who will be familiar to many of us as one of the women whose statutory right to comment on the draft findings of the commission of investigation was wrongly denied. She once said, "I am not a survivor. I am a small, yet mighty, resisting worker for justice." She has had to spend much of her life fighting for her rights, for her identity and for justice. Unfortunately, the Government, like its predecessors, is continuing to force people like Mary to fight in the courts. Thousands of survivors are excluded from the Government's scheme. Many of them will never receive redress or recognition, if the Minister has his way. They will get nothing for the life-destroying crime of forced family separation, just as nothing will be given to those boarded out to abusive homes and nothing will be given to those from whom pharmaceutical companies have profited. Others will be given as little as €5,000 for a lifetime of trauma. One would get multiples of that for a whiplash injury. It is truly despicable. I thought that the six-month criterion was a red herring to distract all of the opposition from the ridiculously low rates that other survivors get. I thought the Minister would go back on it.

This scheme shows nothing but contempt for survivors. I cannot express how, as a public representative, it turns my stomach. The rules of this House prevent me from expressing the anger that I know is out there today among people watching. The Minister quite perfectly summarised it in his closing remarks. He said that he wanted to "pay tribute ... to survivors" and that nothing "can ever truly undo" the damage caused. He continued:

... by ensuring that the remains of the children buried at Tuam receive a respectful reburial and by bringing forward a payment scheme that will benefit 34,000 former residents, we are humbly acknowledging the State's duty...

If the Minister was humbly acknowledging the State's duty, he would reword his statement to provide that the remains of the children in all known burial sites around the country will receive a respectful reburial and he would bring forward a payment scheme that would benefit all former residents. That would humbly acknowledge the State's responsibility to some extent.

The Minister is being disingenuous. Given the incredibly serious and personal nature of this topic, that is unforgivable. The Minister claims to have listened. That is blatantly untrue. Survivors participated in the Minister's consultation. They rightly called for a scheme recognising all survivors. They know how others have suffered. They know the evil of a system that separates them into different categories. The casual manner in which the Minister disregards their wishes is sickening. He proudly said he has gone beyond the commission's recommendations, as if that were admirable. The commission's recommendations were arbitrary and inconsistent with the testimony given. We must not forget all those excluded from the investigation in the first place. Any scheme based on those recommendations is equally distorted and defective.

The Minister emphasised that the scheme will be non-adversarial, as if this is a benevolence. He tried to set himself up as the good guy by stating that survivors will not have to provide evidence of harm but, of course, this position is based on the fallacy that there are only two options open to him. The Minister can create a process that recognises harm in a way that trusts survivors because at the heart of the Minister's so-called non-adversarial system is the assumption that survivors would lie. They are being treated in the same way they always have by the same judging and distrusting State. It is wrapped up in kinder language but the core prejudice remains.

Why are the Minister and the Government letting the church and the pharmaceutical companies get away with this? There is a deference to the church in some of the Government parties, and the pharmaceutical companies are major employers, but the Minister should be standing up for justice. Honestly, will anyone be held to account for this litany of crimes? Will anybody in the Bon Secours order be held accountable for Tuam? It is an incredibly wealthy organisation profiting from private healthcare, here and internationally. Why is the Minister not aggressively pursuing them, not only for accountability but for compensation for the victims? The Minister should be giving every survivor every cent that he or she is owed and deserves. He should be pursuing the church and the pharmaceutical companies for the costs they bear responsibility for. Not only would it be the right thing to do, but also the Irish people would be squarely behind the Minister. Instead, the Minister seems to think it better to divide the survivors, give as little as possible and hope that this goes away. This will not go away. His term in office will be marked as another disgrace and he will be seen as another failed Minister blatantly ignoring survivors and disregarding human rights.

I had genuinely hoped today would be a wake-up call for the Government but instead, it will cynically allow this motion to pass while ploughing ahead with its exclusionary and paltry so-called redress scheme. I, along with others, will fight the Government every step of the way at all stages of the Minister's Bill because it ignores survivors, rejects human rights and facilitates religious orders and pharmaceutical companies getting away with crimes. This Government is no different from or better than its predecessors. It has learned nothing. It will not be forgiven.