Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 37:

In page 14, between lines 13 and 14, to insert the following:

“Report on extension of eligibility for general payment under Scheme 19.(1) The Minister shall, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas on the potential to extend eligibility under section 18(1)for a general payment to all relevant persons who were resident in a relevant institution for any period of time, including those who were resident for less than 180 days.

(2) A report under this section shall include a breakdown of the number of persons who applied to the Scheme and were deemed ineligible as a result of the 180 day residency requirement, and the cost to the Exchequer of extending eligibility for the Scheme to include those persons.”.

Amendment No. 20 called for the direct removal or deletion of the minimum 180-day residency requirement for a survivor to qualify for a general payment under the scheme. This should be reflected. Even in a limited general payment, time-based scheme, there is no reason the time may not be any time, rather than setting an arbitrary limit. We have not seen a justification for why it is being set, but the impact of the 180-day residency requirement limit is certainly not arbitrary. Amendment No. 37 simply asks that six months after the scheme went into effect, there would be a report on the potential for removing that 180-day residency requirement. The amendment also calls on the Minister to examine how many people applied to the scheme within those six months and were deemed ineligible, specifically because of the 180-day residency requirement. This is an unconscionable exclusion. We know 24,000 people may be affected by this, but it would be useful to know how many people may be specifically affected. If a report was to be created, as we have suggested in this amendment, such a change could be made within the scheduled approach. This is a small legislative change. I cannot make the change because it will be ruled out of order, but it should be addressed. I will come back to this when I locate my additional notes.

I will refer to the 180-day and six-month time periods in the context of today, when we see Tuam in the news again. We have looked at Tuam. I mentioned Bessborough last week and the fact that at one point in the 1940s in Bessborough, the mortality rate for children was more than 80%. Tuam points to the high mortality rates for infants within these institutions. As a State, we recognise the importance of the first six months. It is why there is wide, though not universal, access to maternity leave. It is recognised as being immensely important, developmentally, for any child. Six months is also the period in which the extremely traumatic event of family separation can take place. The idea that one would exclude children, when those first six months are so important, is not simply a two-tier system or an arbitrary time limit. Such an exclusion is especially damaging to those who may have spent two, three or four months in these institutions, given the developmental importance of those months. That is a general point with regard to the first six months of any infant's life.

However, when we look to the first six months of the children in these institutions, we talk about a first six months spent in institutions that may have the majority of children dying and mortality rates that are off the scale and we see brave people such as Alice Litster, the public health inspector, going to Bessborough.I did want to read her reports into the record but I do not have them. I refer to her reports on the health conditions of children in these institutions in which she describes exactly how bad it was to be a one-month-old, a two-month-old or a three-month-old in Bessborough, and what it meant for them in terms of nutrition and risk to their lives. When there are a lot of children dying, that means there are also a lot of children who may not have died but who were sick, ill-treated and malnourished. That is leaving aside the core trauma of family separation happening within the first six months.

We have put this to the Minister. I acknowledge that this is a Government failure. I do not put it on the Minister solely. It is a matter on which he has been sent out to defend the indefensible in respect of the six-month exclusion. I hold all in Cabinet accountable in respect of the decision to exclude those who spent less than six months in an institution. I urge journalists to speak not just to the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, but any Minister who speaks to them and to ask Ministers what they think the reasons are for this six-month exclusion. I include the Taoiseach and the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. It is not justifiable, and no justification has ever been provided. The general justification for a time-based approach, which the Minister has offered, does not apply in respect of the decision to make the time limit 180 days versus one day in respect of children. It does not stand up, and in fact the scientific, psychological and international experience points to the need to include as opposed to a justification for exclusion.

We will press and press on this. Nobody has the goal of embarrassing the Minister. We are doing this because this matter genuinely needs a new decision between Committee Stage in the Seanad and Report Stage. Rather than wanting my amendments to succeed, I want the Government to realise that the 180-day exclusion is not acceptable and to come back with an amendment on Report Stage. We will keep pressing until the very end in that regard. I urge everybody, including all of those watching the proceedings, to press the entire Government on this. In fairness, I know there are many Oireachtas Members in Government parties who strongly feel that the 180-day exclusion is not acceptable.

This amendment represents something of a halfway house because it would allow for a report to examine the impact of the exclusion and if the report so recommended, there would potentially be scope for a change in the legislation. As it is a time-based amendment, it would in fact be quite a small change in the legislation in order to widen the scheme. That is why we have the time period we have suggested of six months attached to the amendment. It is so that a report could be produced within a period of time that is relevant to the operation of the scheme.

Amendment No. 22 calls again for the direct removal or deletion of the minimum 90-day residency requirement for a survivor to qualify for a work-related payment under the scheme. Amendment No. 38 is similarly a compromise that simply seeks a report after six months on the potential to remove the 90-day residency requirement. Importantly, it also seeks that we know not just who benefited from the schemes but who did not benefit from them, and for the Minister to examine how many people applied to the scheme and were deemed ineligible specifically because of the 90-day residency requirement. This is another exclusion, which is not defensible. There is nothing in the scheme that accounts for the abuses suffered in the course of work. There is nothing that differentiates between the types of work or provides additional redress for the horrible conditions faced by so many of those working in homes or the gruelling or injurious nature of the work. It was described earlier that in some situations the work was intentionally punitive and degrading. The only criterion is the length of time of residency. In that context, since the qualitative dimension of the kinds of work persons were subjected to is not being recognised, it adds insult to injury to then say, "If you only worked for 90 days, that is not a harm great enough to warrant redress." Even though the choice has been made not to examine the detail of the harm, it is insulting to suggest that survivors would somehow have to sacrifice their right to seek further redress based on their particular and different experiences of work in the institutions. There is no additional redress for people who have sustained, for example, lifelong disabilities or physical injuries from the type of work that was required from them. In that context, where the detail is not being recognised, and a simple and minimalist approach based on days has been taken, it adds insult to injury to say while we are not looking at harm, we have decided that 90 days or 89 days is all right. A period of 89 days can be very damaging. A lot of damage can be done in that time, or in 88 days, 70 days or even 30 days. We know some people who have been deeply affected by degrading and physically and psychologically damaging work in much shorter periods than that.

This goes against the OAK report, which talked about the qualitative issues. What both of these reports have in common, which is perhaps why they have been grouped separately from the other reports we previously discussed, is that both allow the Minister to operate within the choice made by the Government on a time-based scheme. If we produced these reports within six months of the scheme and we found, for example, that a large number of persons were falling short simply because of the cut-off points of 180 days and 90 days, respectively, then changes could be made. A small legislative change could be made. We might suggest that there would be scope for change to be made to the Schedule on Report Stage in terms of where the bar is set on those dates and the days required. It is not inventing the scheme in a completely different way; it is simply moving from 90 days to zero days. It could be 30 days or ten days but I suggest zero days or one day. Similarly, we would move from 180 days, for example, to one day. I hope the Minister can take on board these proposals, which I believe are constructive.