Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)

I will be sharing time with Senator Nicole Ryan.

I join in acknowledging Sheila O'Byrne and Catherine Coffey O'Brien in the Gallery. I acknowledge the profound detrimental impact residential institutional abuse had on survivors, not only at the time but right up to the modern day. I also join Senator Curley in acknowledging Senator Boyhan on his passionate speech today and for all his advocacy work in this area, bringing it home to us what it really means to have been a survivor of something like this.

I wish to quote Ms Maeve Lewis of One in Four, who told the committee:

Survivors of abuse in institutional care were abysmally failed by the Irish State in their early years. It is incumbent now on us as a society to ensure that as they age, they are afforded the highest quality appropriate services they so richly deserve.

I acknowledge that the Bill goes quite some way to providing adequate supports for survivors but there are aspects of the Bill that are unfortunate. It excludes certain people. We know the Residential Institutions Redress Board was limited to 139 institutions, so there were some institutions that were excluded at the time, but there were also people within those 139 institutions who did not apply for redress because they did not understand exactly what the redress was for. At the time, we did not have an organisation like Sage Advocacy to help and support people to apply for the supports to which they were entitled. I welcome the fact that Sage Advocacy is there. Unfortunately, though, there are people who have been excluded for different reasons but who require support. It is retraumatising for them to be omitted from this. Having suffered such abuse as young people in institutions like these, they will suffer the double abuse of being ignored when it comes to receiving support.

The one-off payment for those living overseas of €3,000 is not sufficient either. There is a rising cost of living. The payment could be linked to inflation. If the figure of €3,000 is built into legislation and does not change, it will have less impact as time goes by. That should be re-examined to see if it could be increased and linked to inflation.

We need to recognise that approximately a third of those who will qualify for supports live in Britain. Liam Conlon MP introduced Philomena’s law in the House of Commons in Westminster in March. It is progressing now. I would ask the Department of education to liaise with the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that any person living in Britain who is eligible for support because of institutional abuse is not affected by having his or her payments means tested against this support. That is vital. This was already done for those who live north of the Border.

I recognise that the enhanced medical card is a medical card without review or means test, which is important. However, many people were traumatised by what happened to them and are still traumatised, so it could be widened to include specialised trauma-related therapy to help people deal with the trauma. This would recognise that it is intergenerational, too, in that that if a parent suffered this trauma, it will have affected his or her children and possibly their children as well. We should open up more supports for families rather than just the individual.

On housing supports, anyone who has endured such treatment as a child should never face the added trauma of possibly becoming homeless. Priority needs to be given to people who have survived institutional abuse to get priority for housing supports within our social housing system. That is vital.

Senator Boyhan raised the point of money from religious institutions. Some money has been paid over but it has not been sufficient. I do not think every institution has paid it. It should be sought from those institutions. I recognise that the State bears a responsibility because it allowed these institutions to care for the children without proper monitoring but those within the institutions need to bear responsibility also. There has been evidence of them trying to hide money and assets, which is abhorrent. Pressure should be brought to bear on all the religious institutions to pay a contribution.

I acknowledge others like those who were boarded out. I know people in my community who were boarded out as children to families. My parents knew lots of others who were boarded out at the time. It was a common practice when they were young. They said while some families looked after those children very well, many did not and they were treated like slaves. It is unfortunate that they are being ignored in every sort of support that has been provided. That needs to change.Think of the children who for whatever reason ended up in residential institutions, sometimes because of a bereavement in the family or sometimes for other reasons. Those children were vulnerable. Many of them were already grieving, and then to be put into an institution where they suffered further abuse, be it physical, psychological or sexual abuse, was dreadful. My heart goes out to everybody who has been affected.

Sometimes we forget about the children who suffered extreme physical abuse in our day schools as well. There were horrific stories told last year. I have talked to individuals, and they recalled that. What happened was horrendous. I know there is a different process for that but just to mention them here.