Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 115:

In page 35, between lines 14 and 15, to insert the following: “Report on contribution of relevant parties to Scheme

50.(1) Under this section, “relevant parties” means persons, organisations, the estates of persons, or other entities involved at any time in the operation, management, administration or ownership of relevant institutions, or in the carrying out of illegal vaccine trials or any other medical experimentation on relevant persons.

(2) The Minister shall, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas on the potential for relevant parties to be required to contribute to the cost of the Scheme.

(3) A report under this section shall include consideration of the following matters:

(a) means of identifying and contacting relevant parties, including those resident or incorporated outside the State, and including organisations or corporations that may have been dissolved or are now incorporated under a different name;

(b) options for creating a statutory obligation on relevant parties to contribute to the costs of the Scheme, or any future expansion of the Scheme, including the creation of offences for relevant parties who do not meet their contribution requirements;

(c) the establishment of criteria for determining the size of the contribution due by relevant parties, including but not limited to:

(i) the length of time a relevant party was involved in the operation, management, or administration of a relevant institution, or medical trial in a relevant institution;

(ii) the volume and severity of human rights abuses perpetrated by a relevant party;

(iii) the severity of psychological, physical, medical, or emotional harm perpetrated by a relevant party; and (iv) the financial gain made by a relevant party as a result of their involvement in a relevant institution or medical experimentation in a relevant institution;

(d) analysis of the potential revenue to be collected from contributions under this section, and the potential increases that could be made to payments under this Act as a result of such contributions.”.

Many of the provisions of the scheme as outlined, if we are being frank, must be motivated by cost reduction. The purpose of the 180-day residency requirement for the general payment must be to exclude a huge subset of survivors who would otherwise be able to claim payments. In the absence of another justification offered by the Government, we must assume that is the real reason.

As has been said many times during Committee Stage, this is a shameful way to treat survivors. This entire scheme is estimated to cost €800 million, although it is likely to be less than that as not all eligible survivors will apply. We received news that the combined budget surplus from 2023 and 2024 alone will be €26 billion. That figure may have been revised upwards since. How can the Government possibly justify spending a tiny fraction of a single year's budget surplus on redress for decades upon decades of State abuse which impacted thousands of people? Financial compensation is only one tiny part of true redress. At the very least, we would expect the amounts of compensation to be meaningful or even transformative to the lives of survivors.

We heard some terrible rhetoric from the Government when it was queried about the reason the amounts some survivors will be entitled to are so low.We heard it would be better to spend the money meeting the needs of today or building a better future. Given how concerned the Government is about saving money, it is curious it has failed with this redress scheme to meaningfully pursue the religious orders who profited hugely from the mother and baby homes, and all of the pharmaceutical companies who profited from illegal medical trials such as those referred to by Senator Boyhan just now. Of course, it would be ideal if the burden on present-day taxpayers was minimised and if the scheme was partly funded by the religious orders who perpetrated the horrific abuses of the mother and baby homes. Why is the Government taking no meaningful steps to demand and ensure contributions from these perpetrators? We have heard the Minister's response around this but, frankly, I am just not sure the reasons offered are really acceptable. The State has the power to compel the perpetrators to pay. Some of the religious orders responsible still own significant land and assets in Ireland that could be seized. Some of the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the trials still operate in Ireland and would have no choice but to co-operate with the legal requirements to contribute to the scheme to continue their very profitable operations here.

I note that the pharma giant, GlaxoSmithKline, GSK, which still operates here, declined to apologise for its vaccine trials in mother and baby homes between the 1930s and the 1970s. This is despite the company's own documents showing it conducted seven trials at homes over those four decades. GSK has reported a global operating profit of £8.8 billion in 2021. Amendment No. 115 calls for a detailed report on potential options to compel religious orders, pharmaceutical companies, and all of those involved in the operation of the homes and in the carrying out of illegal medical trials, to contribute financially to the scheme. In particular it calls for detailed analysis of legal options for identifying and contacting all relevant parties, including those entities that have been dissolved or reincorporated under a different identity. More specifically, the amendment also calls for the development of a detailed scheme that would determine how much would be owed towards the scheme by each relevant party, and set out criteria of how the amount owed would be determined. The amendment suggests that some of the criteria might include the severity or volume of abuses perpetrated by a relevant party, and the financial gains made by a relevant party as a result of that party's abuses in the homes. These are some of the factors we should be considering when determining what these guilty parties owe to survivors. Crucially, the amendment also calls for the Government to possibly review and increase the amount of payments to all survivors on the basis of contributions made by guilty parties.