Lynn Ruane (Independent)

I echo everything Senator Higgins said. In our minds, redress is about responding to the harms that the State, church or whatever institution has done. It is a response to a wrong that has been done. It is not another mechanism to silence. That is what a waiver does. With institutional abuse in this country, there was a forced silence at every turn where people could not speak about their experiences for fear of isolation, of shame, of their families finding out or whatever it was. A waiver that takes away a person's human rights in terms of recourse to justice is not only a mechanism to further silence the person, to further protect the State, to further take away the person's voice. When someone applies to a redress scheme, he or she applies through whatever application system is set up. Some people felt like they were begging for what they needed. When people are in the courts taking cases, their points are heard and their histories are shared and what happened to them can be seen in a justice-led and transparent way. That is different to receiving redress. Justice and redress are completely different things and if we do not uncouple them, we are in serious trouble.

We passed the NDA legislation last year because we recognised that the illusion of severance was being used to force people to sign NDAs so they could not talk about workplace abuse, harassment, sexual exploitation and racism. This is the very same practice. We cannot ever put out the idea that redress is about the replacement of legal recourse. Consider, for example, child maintenance. If a person goes into mediation, inadequate child maintenance is decided and the person is unhappy with what was decided in that room, then he or she has recourse to justice. In the case of redress, the fact that the system is setting the criteria, the amounts - the €3,000 and the €15,000 cap - and this and that means that the State is setting constraints on the redress even existing. We are telling people that they signed a waiver, so if they realise they are not happy or have not had their needs met because this is an inadequate service, we have already taken away their right to take it further. We need to go back and clarify, and the Government needs to say that redress is not about replacing legal action. I ask the Minister to reconsider this amendment, if not now, then before Report Stage. For me, that statement in itself shows why such an amendment is so important. It is so that we can ensure that we are not further compounding the silencing and trauma of people who have already been silenced and traumatised for the majority of their lives. That is what waivers do. I do not believe this is what any of us want to do, but we need to accept and acknowledge that this is what it does.