Mary Moran (Labour)

I welcome the Minister to the House and I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Residential Institutions Redress (Amendment) Bill, which facilitates the winding up of the residential institutions redress board. The opportunity for claims under the residential redress scheme has been available since 2002. The closing date for applications was originally December 2005. However it made provision for late applications in exceptional circumstances. The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, announced earlier this month that no further applications can be received after 16 September 2011. I agree the deadline must be upheld in order to wind up the redress board in a fair and timely fashion. I commend the redress board on its advertising campaign and on the notices that will be placed in daily newspapers six weeks before the deadline.

At the end of June 2011, the board had received 15,173 applications, of which 14,645 had been finalised, leading to 13,720 awards. This was a far greater number of claims than was originally anticipated by the previous Government. By the end of 2010, the overall expenditure on the redress scheme and associated litigation was €1.05 billion, including €836 million in awards made by the board and €158 million in associated medical and legal costs.

I would like to express my disappointment at the level of contributions offered by the religious congregations to meet the costs of residential institutional child abuse. Only 12 of the properties offered by the religious congregations have been identified as being of potential benefit to the State and only two of the 18 congregations have agreed to make up the shortfall of €200 million. While I understand the concerns of the proposers of this amendment, it is now impossible to include Bethany Home claims in this redress bill. I appreciate the fact that they have raised the issue but I now hope and anticipate that the Government will take positive alternative steps to ensure a mechanism is put in place to acknowledge the suffering of the Bethany Home residents.

Along with all of the Labour Senators, I am very hopeful an alternative mechanism for recognition of the Bethany Home residents will be found. I would like to pay a personal tribute to Derek Leinster, who has tirelessly worked on behalf of all Bethany Home survivors to bring their plight to public attention. I would also like to pay tribute to the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and Deputy Joe Costello who have campaigned endlessly of behalf of the Bethany residents since 2002. I welcome the establishment of the review committee on the Magdalene laundries survivors chaired by Senator Martin McAleese to examine the role of the State in these laundries and to bring the religious orders and State together to provide a clear picture on their involvement in the Magdalene laundries. I ask the Minister to consider the cases of the Bethany Home survivors in this review with the Magdalene survivors so that the terrible scandals and dreadful legacy of abuse victims in our institutions may finally be resolved.