Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment.

I am concerned that we are not using the full extent of State power to force guilty parties such as religious orders and pharmaceutical companies to contribute to the scheme. We have retabled amendment No. 45, which would require the Government to explore legal options to require relevant parties, including religious orders, pharmaceutical companies that ran illegal medical trials in the homes and all other guilty parties, to contribute to the scheme. It would also require the Government to explore options for increasing the payments to survivors under the scheme. Guilty parties should be forced to pay reparations to survivors for the immense hurt and pain they have caused. The entire scheme is estimated to cost €800 million. At the same time, we have recently been told that the combined budget surplus from 2023 and 2024 will be €26 billion. How can we justify spending a tiny fraction of a single year’s budget surplus on redress for many decades of State abuse that impacted thousands of people?

The pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, GSK, which still operates here, has declined to apologise for its vaccine trials in mother and baby homes between the 1930s and 1970s despite the company’s own documents showing that it conducted seven trials at homes over those four decades. GSK reported a global operating profit of £8.8 billion in 2021. Our amendment calls for a detailed report from the Minister on potential options to compel religious orders, pharmaceutical companies and all others 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 a detailed analysis of legal options for identifying and contacting all relevant parties including those entities which have since been dissolved or reincorporated under a different identity. More specifically, it calls for the development of a detailed scheme which would determine how much is owed towards the scheme by each relevant party and set out criteria for how the amount owed will be determined. The amendment suggests that some of the criteria might include the severity and volume of abuses perpetrated by a relevant party and the financial gain made by a relevant party as a result of the abuses in the homes. These are only some of the factors that we should consider when determining what these guilty parties owe to survivors.