Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I acknowledge Mary, Mary and Mary - I was going to call them the three Marys - in the Gallery.

I hear what the Minister is saying about it just being a procedural aspect. We hear all the time from survivors that the schemes are inaccessible, difficult to understand, difficult to access and bureaucratic. I have a challenge with the idea that if no one has applied in three years, we can decide to wind it down. I refer to circumstances where we already have schemes that we know survivors cannot access because they are inherently inaccessible because they are bureaucratic and use systems and processes. As we spoke about last week - Senator Boyhan spoke about this at length - some people may have left school quite early. We are asking them to fill out forms. We have already said that, in the context of many of the bureaucratic systems, when these people are faced with forms or are trying to access services, it is difficult for them. We can presume, based on this information, that survivors might not apply. There might not be sufficient outreach by the Department to engage survivors. As a result, I would be hesitant to think that this would be an indication that there were no survivors who could access these schemes. It is that the schemes are not sufficiently accessible. I seriously urge against the idea that we take the fact that no one has applied as evidence that there is no one out there to apply. That is not the correct logic we should be using.

I understand what the Minister said, namely that it is perhaps not appropriate legislatively to have a scheme that is open-ended, but we can amend it. Surely, at that time, it can be amended to close it down. That approach would respond more realistically to what we have already heard about the challenges survivors have in accessing schemes in the first place.