Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

What has been captured concisely by the Senator is exactly how I am struggling to separate the county home from the maternity services. Even though other people may have received adequate care, I do not think they can be separated. If a certain administration or facility has agreed to allow a county home within its site, well then it is the county home. You may have been on a ward, and experienced the stigma and the lack of pain medication. Your child was taken from you, but maybe your family decided to take you home and you did not have to sleep in the county home bit. The abuses were still the same, apart from you not going into the county home part. It was all on the same site, even though they were co-located. I do not think in the co-location sites it is fair to uncouple them. At some stage they were agreeing to allow that happen. I could be in the same hospital or on the same wing as another woman in a better position, who is married or has a partner. We are experiencing something very different, as Senator Seery Kearney mentioned earlier. I would still be experiencing the institutional abuses. I would just be experiencing them in another building, but they are still on the same grounds. That is where this fails to capture that. It is unique to the other situations. We cannot let those maternity services off because they were part of it. It was just a different building. They were still carrying out the institutional abuses. To separate them and say that you had to spend even one night in the county home to access this, is denying that those maternity services were part of the county home. However, we are still willing to recognise them as part of the county home in the waiver. That is what I am saying. We are not willing to recognise them as part of it when we are considering who is eligible for redress.