Shane Curley (Fianna Fail)

I acknowledge Sheila O'Byrne and Catherine Coffey O'Brien, who are in the Gallery. I have read Ms Coffey O'Brien's letter and will revert to it in my concluding remarks.

Senator Boyhan said that nothing beat life experience, and I fully agree. With the way he laid out his remarks, it hit home. I was a secondary school teacher before I became a Member of this House. Given the damage that can be done to a child when abused, I do not know how he has the strength to come from that background and be in this House advocating for others. It takes huge courage. I do not know how he does what he does, but fair play to him.

Let me begin by acknowledging with the utmost sincerity the extraordinary pain, trauma and injustice suffered by survivors of residential institutional abuse. It is important to recognise their deep personal suffering, childhoods marked not by safety or nurture, but by fear, neglect and violence. This is an acknowledgement that the State, through its actions and inaction, abandoned its duty of care to the most vulnerable children in society. These children were placed in institutions with the promise, or at least the hope, of protection. Instead, they were subjected to systems that dehumanised them, exploited their innocence and inflicted harm where there should have been healing. That failure, as laid bare by the Ryan report and corroborated by countless testimonies, was not a marginal or accidental one. It was systemic. It was rooted in institutions that operated with impunity, were shielded by silence and were sanctioned by the very structures meant to hold them accountable.

The consequences were life long, including physical scars born from violence, emotional wounds caused by abandonment and humiliation, and psychological trauma that often went unspoken about but was no less real. Survivors have lived with this burden for decades, often in silence, disbelieved or retraumatised by a society that looked away. That silence must end. This acknowledgement today is not just symbolic. It is a necessary foundation for action, reparation and justice that is long overdue.

As a Fianna Fáil Senator, I am happy to see that our party and the Government are taking concrete steps to provide dignity, justice and sustained support to survivors. That is welcome. This Bill is about more than policy. It is about a moral obligation. It marks a new phase in the State's response, a shift from one-off redress to life-long supports, and that is important. It seeks to establish enduring entitlements to health, education and advocacy. The enhanced medical card included in this Bill will ensure access to necessary health and social care services. This is the same package of supports that is provided to survivors of the Magdalen laundries under the Magdalen laundries scheme and that will be provided to former residents of mother and baby and county home institutions under the mother and baby institutions payment scheme. This is long overdue recognition of the cumulative impact that institutional abuse had on survivors' physical and mental health.

However, the Health (Amendment) Act, HAA, card provided for under the Health (Amendment) Act 1996, covers more services and has been identified by survivors groups as a key request. Therefore, the legislation should provide all survivors with a HAA card rather than the proposed enhanced medical card.

For those survivors who live abroad, the Bill provides a €3,000 health support payment. While this matches the approach under the mother and baby institutions payment scheme, I put on record the concerns raised with me by survivors groups that this amount may not be sufficient, especially for those with complex needs or in vulnerable financial positions that may have been caused by institutional abuse.

It is important that we learn from past redress processes. Many survivors were excluded from accessing redress in the early 2000s. Some were in prison. Others were suffering from cognitive impairments, some of which stemmed directly from their institutional experiences. We must not repeat those exclusions. That is why I welcome the call by the joint committee for the eligibility criteria in this Bill to be expanded to ensure all survivors of residential institutions covered by the Bill have equal access to its supports, even if they did not receive a prior award from the Residential Institutions Redress Board or Caranua.

Many survivors, particularly those who were boarded out, have spoken powerfully of being denied fair recognition or compensation for the work they were made to do as children. To be boarded out was to be placed, usually from an industrial or residential institution, in a private home, often in rural Ireland under the pretence of care or fostering.In practice, however, many of these placements amounted to little more than unpaid child labour. Children were taken into households, not to be raised as family members, but to work on farms, in kitchens, in factories or minding other people’s children. This was a system that blurred the line between care and exploitation and, in far too many cases, erased it altogether. These were children, some as young as nine or ten, expected to perform adult duties every day, often without access to proper education, without pay and without oversight. The people they worked for were often the ones who were supposed to protect them but instead profited from their labour.

These victims had no choice, no contract, no wage and no way to say "No". These were not isolated incidents. This represents a broader pattern of systemic exploitation, enabled and sanctioned by the State through the boarding out system. Many of these survivors, now elderly, have found themselves excluded or insufficiently compensated under current redress schemes. They gave their labour as children in conditions that would never be tolerated today and were left to carry the impact of that for the rest of their lives – lost education, lost opportunities and the loss of childhood itself. That is why I believe that the recommendation for a contributory State pension for survivors must be given urgent consideration. Just as the Magdalen laundry survivors received additional top-ups to their pensions to acknowledge unpaid institutional work, so too must this group be recognised for their contribution despite the absence of a formal work history.

Another essential element of this Bill is education. The grant scheme will support survivors in pursuing further and higher education on top of existing SUSI entitlements and will waive the student contribution charge. However, we must go further. Survivors have called for educational supports to extend to their families to break the cycle of disadvantage. I echo the committee’s call for a non-means-tested bursary of up to €3,000 annually for survivors and their immediate family members.

The survivor-led consultative forum and the joint committee have rightly highlighted the overwhelming difficulty survivors face in navigating public services. I commend the work of Sage Advocacy. I spoke to Mr. Damian O’Farrell, a former councillor, recently. Sage Advocacy is already rolling out individual advocacy and information supports and Mr. O'Farrell explained to me what that entailed. What it is doing is impressive but it needs more support. It should be placed on a statutory footing as recommended by the committee. Survivors deserve a permanent trauma-informed advocacy service with the resources and staffing necessary to reach even the most isolated survivors, including those overseas.

This Bill provides for the dissolution of Caranua and the transfer of certain records to the Minister. Trust must be rebuilt transparently and respectfully.

In 2019, while marking the tenth anniversary of the Ryan report, President Higgins said: “a commitment was made that we, as a society, would do all we could to address the great damage that had been inflicted on generations of children”. Fulfilling that commitment remains an obligation. This Bill is part of fulfilling that obligation. It is not perfect. It is a serious progressive step forward, but it needs work. We must continue to listen to survivors, include those who were left behind, act with compassion and legislate with justice. Let us not just acknowledge past wrongs; let us build a future that finally provides the support, recognition and dignity that survivors have always deserved.

I read Ms Coffey O'Brien's letter. I mentioned the vulnerability of a small child placed into institutional care and the damage that could be done. As a secondary school teacher, it hit home to me when I was out in the yard observing kids at break or even just conversing with them in the classroom how vulnerable they were at 12 and 13 years of age, coming into first and second year. I cannot even begin to imagine at a younger age the damage that is done to a small child when abused in the hands of the State. I acknowledge Ms Coffey O'Brien's letter. I hear her. "What little of life we have left" was the phrase that really hit me. There is a lot of good in this Bill and a lot of positive steps forward. For what little of life the survivors have, the recommendations I have mentioned should be enacted and I will do all I can to make that happen.