Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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Before I call the Minister for Education and Youth, Deputy McEntee, I welcome Sheila O'Byrne, one of the residents of the institutions established by the State to which the Bill relates. I thank Sheila very much for being here and for her advocacy on behalf of everybody. The reason many of these issues are being addressed is because people like Sheila have not remained silent over the years. I thank her again so much for being here.

Turning back to the legislation, the Minister will speak for ten minutes, group spokespersons for ten minutes and all other Senators for five minutes, with the Minister to reply not later than 3.20 p.m. I call the Minister.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I will start by also acknowledging Sheila and thanking her for being here. In introducing the Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill 2024 before this House, I am very conscious of the enormous trauma that has been endured by survivors of all abuse. Nothing we can do now and nothing I can say here will ever undo the hurt that has been caused.

It has been nearly 25 years since the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, on 11 May 1999 apologised on behalf of the State to the victims of childhood abuse. That apology arose from the important recognition of the extent and effect of the childhood abuse that had taken place in institutions that were supervised and regulated by the State. How a society treats children tells us much about that society. We all agree that every child deserves the utmost in care, attention and love. For too many children, this obligation was not honoured. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse shone a very strong light into dark places of Irish history. As I said, nothing can ever be said or done to unravel the pain and suffering from those who were abused. I acknowledge that again today.

The final report of the commission, known as the Ryan report, was published in 2009. It revealed that shocking levels of physical and emotional abuse were endemic in the institutions concerned, while sexual abuse also occurred in many institutions, particularly those for boys. In parallel with the work of the commission, the Residential Institutions Redress Board was established in 2002 to make fair and reasonable awards of redress to those who as children were abused while resident in industrial schools, reformatories and other institutions subject to State regulation or inspection. The redress board accepted applications for almost nine years. Ultimately, about 15,600 survivors received awards of redress. In 2006, the Education Finance Board was established on a statutory basis to provide grants to survivors and their relatives to assist them in engaging in education. This was enabled by a specific fund provided by the relevant religious congregations under the 2002 indemnity agreement. The board was formally dissolved in 2013. Similarly, funding of more than €110 million was provided by the congregations following the publication of the Ryan report in 2009. This was assigned to the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Board, or Caranua, which was established in 2013 to provide funding and supports to survivors in respect of approved services such as health, education or housing.

Overall, Caranua provided funding supports to more than 6,000 eligible survivors, with each applicant receiving variations of different supports. To date, these initiatives have involved a significant amount of funding - albeit we are not here to talk about funding – in the amount of €1.5 billion, including direct redress payments to other supports or survivors, as well as other payments that have happened over the years through the different structures put in place.

The national counselling service was established in 2000 as a free nationwide service providing counselling and psychotherapy service to survivors of abuse in residential institutions. In addition, my Department has since funded the origins tracing service for individuals who spent all or part of their childhoods in Irish industrial schools and who are interested in tracing information about their parents, siblings or other relatives. The service, which is operated by Barnardos, is available free of charge to survivors living in Ireland but also supports those living abroad.

The legislation before the House has two main purposes. It is intended to enable the delivery of ongoing health and education supports to survivors of abuse in residential institutions such as industrial schools and reformatories and to provide for the dissolution of Caranua. The Bill was published in April 2024 and completed its passage through the Dáil on 28 May 2025. This marks a new phase of the State providing ongoing supports to survivors and builds on the response to this issue to date. The development of the new package of supports was informed by consideration of the reports of a survivor-led consultative forum, along with other relevant reports and submissions. My predecessor as Minister, Deputy Norma Foley, met with the forum on several occasions. I acknowledge the commitment and engagement of its members.

Subject to the enactment of the Bill, it is my intention that the health supports payment for former residents of institutions living outside the State, as well as the education supports, will be available by 1 August. The roll-out of the health supports for those who are resident in Ireland will be from the third quarter of this year following consultation with the Minister for Health and the HSE. It is imperative that these measures are implemented and supported as soon as possible.

I will now outline the key parts of the Bill, as passed by the Dáil. Part 1 provides for a number of preliminary matters, including commencement, the payment of expenses arising from the administration of the Bill and definitions. A key definition is that of "former resident" as it relates to those who will be eligible for the supports provided under the legislation. This is defined by reference to the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act 2012 that established Caranua and essentially provided that a former resident is a person who received an award of redress from the Residential Institutions Redress Board or a similar board or a settlement.

Part 2 provides for the delivery of health and education supports to survivors. Section 4 provides for the delivery of a package of health supports and services to former residents that will allow survivors access to GP services, drugs and medicines, home nursing and home helps, dental, ophthalmic and aural services, counselling, chiropody and physiotherapy. This is the same package of supports as that being provided to survivors of the Magdalen laundries under the Magdalen laundry scheme and to former residents of mother and baby homes and county home institutions under the mother and baby homes institutions payment scheme. This entitlement will be for life and will not be subject to means testing or review.

Section 4 also provides a legal basis for the transfer and processing of any relevant data by the Department and the HSE to enable the delivery of these supports. It requires that such processing be subject to suitable and specific measures to safeguard the rights of data subjects.In recognition of the fact that approximately a third of survivors of abuse in residential institutions live outside of the State, section 5 provides for the making of a once-off health support payment of €3,000 to survivors who are resident abroad. This is in lieu of the enhanced medical card to support their health needs. This is the same approach as was taken in the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023.

Section 6 provides for the payment, on application by a survivor and subject to criteria determined under the Bill, of a grant to assist them to engage in education. Subject to the passage of the Bill, my Department will establish a new scheme involving the payment of cash grants ranging from €500 to €2,000 to survivors who are engaging, or who wish to continue to engage, in further and higher education. The scheme will also ensure survivors are not required to pay the student contribution charge where this would otherwise apply. These grants will be additional to the wide range of enhanced supports in place for those seeking to engage in further and higher education, including the free fees initiative, the SUSI student grant scheme, the back to education allowance, and initiatives such as Springboard.

Part 3 contains a number of standard provisions relating to the dissolution of Caranua. As I have already outlined, Caranua’s specific purpose was to disburse funding supports to survivors in areas such as health, housing and education from a ring-fenced fund of €110 million plus interest of €1.38 million, which was provided by the relevant congregations following the publication of the Ryan report. As the funding available to it was finite in nature and could not, under the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act, 2012, be supplemented by Exchequer funding, Caranua began winding down its operations in 2018 and effectively closed in March 2021. Part 3 provides for the appointment by the Minister of a dissolution day upon which Caranua will be dissolved, for the transfer of relevant functions to the Minister, for the transfer of liability for loss, property rights and liabilities, for the preparation by the Minister of Caranua’s final accounts and final annual report, and the closure of the investment account which holds what remains of the statutory fund.

I note in particular that section 14 provides for the transfer of Caranua’s records to the Minister and for the processing of that data for certain specific purposes. It is important to note that the records held by Caranua do not include detailed testimony or accounts of survivors' experience of abuse in residential institutions - the type held by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse or the Residential Institutions Redress Board. The records relate solely to Caranua’s role of disbursing funding to survivors, including day-to-day administrative records and records relating to applications made by survivors. These data and records will continue to be subject to both GDPR and freedom of information legislation, and survivors will continue to be entitled to exercise their GDPR and FOI rights, including seeking a copy of their own data. My Department has engaged closely with both the Office of the Attorney General and the Data Protection Commissioner on revisions relating to the transfer and processing of data under the Act. Appropriate and suitable safeguards will be put in place, in consultation with the Data Protection Commission where necessary, to ensure all such data is held confidentially and in compliance with all data protection requirements.

Section 17 provides for the utilisation of any funds transferred to the Minister upon Caranua’s dissolution and provides that these funds will be used only for the purpose of benefiting former residents. However, it should be noted that very limited funding remains available to Caranua at this time.

Part 4 contains a number of miscellaneous provisions. Section 18 provides for the transfer of certain data to the Minister by the Residential Institutions Redress Board, the data concerned being the name, address and date of birth of each individual who received an award of redress from the board, and for processing of that data where necessary and proportionate to confirm the eligibility of a person for the ongoing supports provided under the Bill.

Section 19 provides for the making of relevant regulations by the Minister, while section 20 provides for the amendment of the Nursing Homes Support Scheme Act 2009 to ensure redress payments made by the Residential Institutions Redress Board are no longer taken into account when making financial assessments under the fair deal scheme.

Section 21 provides for the amendment of the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023 to take account of the supports to be provided under this Bill. The 2023 Act provides that a person who has benefited from the Magdalen laundry scheme will not be eligible for a health support payment under the Act. The proposed amendment will ensure this will apply to a former resident who receives a health support payment under section 5.

As well as the health and educational supports provided for under the Bill, Government also approved the provision of advocacy supports specifically for survivors. Although these do not require a legislative basis and are not reflected in the Bill, they represents a critical element in the overall package of supports. Survivors highlighted the difficulties many experience in engaging with and accessing existing mainstream public services and identified a requirement for signposting and advocacy for access to such survivors. That is why this has been put in place. My Department has therefore entered into a grant funding arrangement with Sage Advocacy, an independent advocacy organisation, which we are all aware of, with a strong track record in providing advocacy supports to older people, vulnerable adults and healthcare patients, to develop information support advocacy services to assist individual survivors to engage with and access relevant services and support. Sage Advocacy has already rolled this service out, which has involved recruiting regional advocates who are based around the country. They engage with survivors to support them in their dealings with service providers in areas of health, social protection and housing. Sage continues to implement a communications and outreach plan to try to promote survivors' awareness of the availability of this service.

Given the importance of delivering this suite of measures to survivors, especially the health and education supports outlined in the Bill, I hope to enact the Bill as quickly as possible. I commend the Bill to the House. I acknowledge every single survivor, those who we were referencing specifically here today and all survivors of childhood abuse. We can never change what happened but we have to acknowledge it to move forward and do everything we possibly can to support in every way possible those who are impacted. That is what we are trying to do here. It will never go far enough - I appreciate that - but this is a step in the right direction. We need to make some small acknowledgement of the trauma inflicted on so many people.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for coming to the Seanad to outline this important Bill.

Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for her detailed statement. I welcome Sheila O'Byrne and Catherine Coffey O'Brien to the Chamber today. I thank them for engaging with me beforehand and for their candour as they told their story. I look forward to seeing how we can meet their demands and requirements later on.

I rise to express my support for the Supports for the Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill 2024. The Bill represents more than just legislation. It is a reaffirmation of our commitment to the survivors of some of the darkest chapters in our State's history. For too long the voices of those who suffered in residential institutes were not heard, and in more recent years, we have taken steps to acknowledge those wrongs through redress, the work of Caranua and the Ryan report. Today we take another necessary step forward. This Bill, as the Minister said, has two key objectives. First is to ensure the continued delivery of essential health and education supports to survivors. The Bill ensures eligible survivors, particularly those receiving compensation from the Residential Institutions Redress Board or similar court awards or settlements, will continue to receive crucial health and education assistance. In respect of health supports for Irish residents, the HSE will be mandated to provide a range of health services, including GP services, prescribed drugs, medicines, home nursing, home help and dental among others, but also to provide health supports for non-Irish residents. Survivors living outside Ireland will receive a health support payment of €3,000 to assist with their health needs. As the Minister said regarding education supports, cash grants ranging from €500 to €2,000 will be available to eligible survivors wishing to undertake education or training courses. This applies regardless of whether they live in Ireland or abroad, and there is a maximum overall cap of €8,000 depending on their course level. Survivors can make one application per year.

Second, the Bill provides for the orderly and respectful dissolution of Caranua, a body that played a vital role in supporting survivors and whose work is now complete. Crucially, this legislation ensures survivors, both those living here in Ireland and those living abroad, will continue to receive targeted, meaningful supports, whether through health services, education grants or the waiving of student contribution fees. This Bill acknowledges not only the past suffering but also the ongoing needs and dignity of survivors today. I especially welcome the inclusion of advocacy support through Sage Advocacy, which directly responds to the survivors’ own calls for help in navigating services. It is a compassionate and practical measure that ensures no one is left behind simply because they struggle to access the assistance available to them.The work of the Residential Institutions Redress Board and the education and finance board, Caranua, collectively represents nearly €1.1 billion in support, but we know money alone cannot help heal those deep wounds. What this Bill does and why it matters is that it continues the State's recognition and care for survivors in a structured and sustainable way. Let us be clear: this is not the end of a process but the beginning of a new phase in how the State supports those who are so gravely wronged. It is a statement that we will not forget, abandon or fail to act. I commend the Minister and the Department on their work on this Bill. I urge all Members of the House to support its passage.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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First, I welcome our guests, particularly our two colleagues in the front who have been here many times in many other debates. I thank the Minister and her predecessor for their engagement on this.

In preparing for today, I was conscious I wanted to open with a positive line of thanks to several people. To fill in for those new people who may not have met me or know about me, I speak with some knowledge and lived experience of this issue. I lived in three State institutions in my life as a child. Therefore, there were different experiences with which I bring some lived experience and there is no substitute for that. It was only when I was coming up the stairs that I remembered it was 27 years ago that Mary Raftery, the author of "States of Fear" and now deceased, came to my home to discuss a whole range of issues around institutional care and the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children within the State, both in the care of the State and the church. We need to be very careful. It is too easy to demonise the church and the religious. I wish to pay particular tribute to them. I am a member of a faith community - the Church of Ireland - by birth, heritage and choice and a supporter of the faith communities. I am not prepared to contribute to a negative conversation about all of them, because this was clearly not the case.

I give thanks to the many unsung heroes and decent men and women of religious vocation in every denomination who gave their best, were always good and who put children and people in their care to the fore. They have been forgotten in the narrative of abuse of children within our State. I thank Mary Raftery, from the "States of Fear" for her remarkable programme. I thank Christine Buckley from Goldenbridge and "Dear daughter"; the former councillor and mayor of Clonmel, Michael O'Brien, who gave a compelling and personal testimony of his life; and John Bowman from RTÉ "Question and Answers" who said Mr. O'Brien's words had "a greater impact than any other contribution from the audience in the history of the programme." What an endorsement from John Bowman.

I think of Philomena Lee and Philomena's Law which is currently going through Westminster as we speak. It is being discussed how she championed the rights of mothers and children who were born or found themselves in mother and baby homes. I give thanks to Catherine Corless for her great work and advocacy in Tuam. In a matter of days, we will see the first exhumations coming from there which is a story in itself. I think of our former councillor Damien O'Farrell whose experience in the Christian Brothers is well documented and went through the processes. He is a key advocate in Sage Advocacy, which the Minister has talked about. I also think of Conrad Bryan from the Association of Mixed Race Irish, AMRI, who has spoken in these Houses many times about the prejudice and challenges of children who were mixed race in the fifties, sixties and seventies, where they found no place. I think of Senator Colm O'Gorman and his experience of abuse at the hands of Father Seán Fortune in the Wexford diocese - again, all documented and in the public realm - and how he set up One in Four to champion and advocate for people and how courageous that was of him and the price.

There are many others but I cannot let today go without thinking of our own Samantha Long, Senator McDowell's PA - who was only on the Joe Duffy show and the Late Late Show in the past two weeks - and how she has championed the rights of survivors. She works with us on these corridors of power as a constant reminder and advocate for what happened to women, children and families at the hands of the Church and State. All overcame many obstacles to reveal the serious levels of historic abuse in Ireland's institutions. They battled courageously against successive governments who wished to suppress the secrets they were committed to revealing. How remarkable that was.

Their stories shook the country to its core, shedding light on the harrowing physical and sexual abuse suffered by children under the care - or the supposed care - of the religious orders, the non-religious and industrial schools and places of detention. Thankfully the floodgates were irrevocably opened and they can never be shut. We are making progress but there is more to be done. A public apology was issued, as the Minister said, by Bertie Ahern on behalf of the State. We had the Ryan Commission report and a subsequent public apology from the then Uachtarán na hÉireann, Mary McAleese. We then had another apology from the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. The apologies were made and there was an acceptance that the State had an absolute responsibility.

Going back to Mary Raftery and the conversation we had 27 years ago in my home, she went on to make the programme to open up, empower and allow people to share their stories. It is not easy to talk about your personal experience. People come up to you and they say "did your family not want you? What were the circumstances?" There were many circumstances for all of us while we were in care. We had to live with that and go around with the shame and the guilt. We could have if we chose to but we abandoned that and decided we could do other things with our lives. My past has motivated and politicised me. The greatest day of my life was coming into this parliament to be an advocate. Did I think, as a young child in 1961 right up to the seventies, that I would be elected to my council? As a matter of fact, my happiest day was being elected to my council in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. Going in that door, a door I had gone through for years to receive hospitality and was now back as a member and then I came to this parliament. Where you have conviction, you move on. My experience politicised me and I hope I keep it under a certain amount of fine tuning because it is so closely connected to the person that it is an emotional tie. I will never give up advocating for justice and helping people along the way.

Mary Raftery went on to produce "Cardinal Secrets", the investigation into the clerical child sex abuse in our Dublin diocese. In 2008, she reported on the medical malpractice and interference of bodily integrity of people at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and RTÉ "Prime Time" covered that programme. Back again in 2011, "Behind the Walls" was Raftery's last production which highlighted the appalling conditions of abuse in our Irish psychiatric hospitals. A tireless, brave and selfless woman, Mary Raftery died exhausted in St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin on 10 January 2012 at the age of 54. It is said she filled the elusive ambition of most journalists; she made a difference.

I thank RTÉ, especially "Prime Time", "Questions and Answers" and "Prime Time Investigates". That is public broadcasting at its very best. Last week, we saw it again when it highlighted the issues in nursing homes. What a great credit it is to our national broadcaster, our public broadcasting, that beams the truth into the homes of us all. It is important to acknowledge that.

I am conscious of my time. I have read the Dáil transcripts and noted the arguments for and against. I noted what the Minister said and the voting record of the Members. No doubt we will have some debate here next week. Many have said - including the Minister - we cannot undo the past. I say it is within our power to assist and make a difference, to help and give a helping hand and to collaborate with the Church and State. I appeal to the Church - and that includes the Church of Ireland in which I am an active member by choice - and all the denominations that they must come to the table and give money forward. An indemnity scheme was entered into and - in my view - it might not have been enough but a deal is a deal. The leaders of all the Churches in this country, including my own, must cough up and pay up. They have a moral responsibility. They cannot talk about transparency, justice and equality with all credibility if they will not come to the table with Government to support it.I will make some simple requests. I do not want to come in and clog up the Oireachtas next week with a whole load of amendments that will all be voted against with the Whip applied, etc. I understand the political process and that it is not personal. The Minister and all of us understand that, too, so what will I ask for? I ask that special support be given to the special advocate, Ms Patricia Carey. She has done amazing work. I have read her reports. She does not report directly to the Minister, but she reports to another Minister. Her work is exceptional. She has been in touch with us. There is a meaningful role for her. She has engaged with many people I know and I know the powerful impact she has had on their lives, so I ask the Minister, Deputy McEntee, to engage and consider that.

I am delighted to hear of the Minister's support for Sage Advocacy. In particular, I mention the former councillor, Mr. Damian O'Farrell. It is great to see that important work because it is about the future and helping people to navigate the rest of their lives.

I ask for a just redress scheme for those excluded, not within the parameters of this scheme because it is too late. The Minister can call it what she will, but let us see that we assist people with housing - give them special status on their applications with housing points, because that is important - health, pensions and medical support.

The boarded-out men and women of this State, many of whom have been my guests in these Houses, were boarded out illegally and were slave labourers. They lived in cattle sheds, drank water out of cattle troughs and lived off the clippings that were left from the main kitchens of the farm houses. They are still alive. Many are in the west, but also in other places. Let us reach out to them. Let us help them. We do not need legislation. We just need humanity and practicality.

There are the children who were born to multiracial families that were away and then - the Cathaoirleach has great commitment on this - the forgotten Irish, the Irish walking the streets of London, Birmingham, Liverpool and further afield who have no place to come back to. Ireland is a very different place now, thankfully. They need help. In fairness to our ambassador in London, amazing work is going on. I urge the Minister to reach out to the existing agencies and support these people.

We have never addressed the issue of the drug trials. I lived in an institution where drug trials took place. There is no dispute over it. Micheál Martin spoke at great length in both Houses about this. Drug trials were carried out on children in this State and no compensation has been given. It is accepted that it happened. We have the necessary documentation about these reports. SmithKline and the Wellcome Foundation were involved. It has all been documented. We must give the people who were impacted justice. A former Minister, Mr. Alan Shatter, spoke to me at the time and talked about the right to bodily integrity enshrined in our Constitution. We owe it to the people, to the children and their families. They were used without parental consent. No one seems to know under what loco parentisthey stood. They were used as guinea pigs for vaccines. It was wholly wrong and it must be revisited.

I will finish on that. I thank the Minister for her time. I want us to work together on practical measures. Let us not tie ourselves up in any more words or more sheets of legislation but commit to a working agenda with Sage Advocacy and the great advocate Patricia Carey and help people, most of whom are now in their 70s, to finish their last days with the dignity, respect, love and affection they should have had long ago. If we do that, we can put our hands on our hearts and say we are really repentant and that we will do something for these people to ensure their last days in this life have a little comfort, the comfort they rightly deserve.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I join the Senator in thanking the late Mary Raftery for all her work.

Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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Hear, hear.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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She died at 54 after giving such service to the State in exposing the wrongdoing. We say the State, but it is that of everyone from the church to the politicians who accepted the status quo. She exposed those who led the institutional abuse, systemised it and made it part of the institutions of the State. I thank Ms Raftery for that work. Like Senator Boyhan, I hope that the amendments to make the legislation more inclusive and able to deal with all of those affected by this issue will be included on Committee Stage. As Catherine Coffey O'Brien has said, Ireland needs to heal and we need to heal the victims. I thank Senator Boyhan especially for his work and advocacy on this. He has lived the experience. We are lucky to have someone like him in the Seanad to speak for all those who were in those institutions.

Shane Curley (Fianna Fail)
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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.

Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)
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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.

Nicole Ryan (Sinn Fein)
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I join colleagues in what they said about Senator Boyhan's contribution. I thank him for giving it. You can never beat lived experience.

I am here to speak in support of those whose lives have been shaped and often devastated by Ireland's legacy of institutional abuse. I do so not from a place of abstract policy but grounded in the lived reality of someone in the constituency in which I live. She is an eldest daughter, now a woman of immense strength, whose story I carry with me today. From as early as the age of seven, she was not just a child but a caretaker. The eldest of eight, she was responsible for feeding and changing her baby siblings, soothing their cries when visitors called because it was the only time she might receive a glimmer of praise. The praise never came from the one person she needed the most, her mother. Her mother was a survivor of the industrial school system. The trauma she experienced did not stop with her generation. It seeped into the next, shaping her parental ways, which were sometimes distant, cold and devastating. There were no birthday cards, no Christmas presents, no swings, no hugs, no pride, just duty, silence and survival. By the age of eight, the woman to whom I refer was scrubbing paintwork and cleaning floors to perfection. At 16, she had left school to work and support the family. Her childhood, her self-worth and her potential were all collateral damage of a system that brutalised her mother and then abandoned her too.

This is the legacy of institutional abuse in Ireland. It is not historic; it is generational. The Bill in its current form fails to recognise that truth. To the survivors living abroad, many of whom were forced to emigrate as a direct consequence of their institutional trauma, it offers once-off payments, with, as Senator Tully said, no regard for inflation, health needs or the reality of an ageing population with sometimes no family or State support. To the survivors still here in Ireland, it offers a maze of exclusions and conditions while still shielding religious orders from their full financial obligations. What about the children of the survivors, the ones who inherited the trauma, who were raised in silence and stoicism, who never received the love their parents never learned to give? Where is their acknowledgement in this? Where is the support for people like the woman to whom I refer, who endured an upbringing shaped entirely by institutional trauma without ever setting foot in the institution herself?

Who is the Government protecting? It is not the survivors. It is certainly not their children or those who bear the burden of Ireland's unresolved past. To the woman whose words I carried here with me today, I want to say that you were never too big for that swing. You should have had the doll of your own and you deserve every hug that you never got. We can never fully undo the past, and we have acknowledged that today. What we can decide right now is whether to compound the harm that was done or begin to finally heal it.

Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)
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I am down to share time. The others might turn up while I am speaking.

Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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You have ten minutes, so you can take of it what you wish.

Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)
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Thank you. When the State brought forward a scheme that focused on managing legal liability rather than the human rights needs of survivors, we had limits, delays and exclusions. It forced survivors to prove themselves again, to plead and to be retraumatised. This Government has had multiple opportunities to do the right thing regarding survivors, and every time it seems to choose the narrow the scope in order to avoid legal obligations. More survivors become retraumatised through the system, the hoops involved and all the bureaucratic processes. This cannot really be described as justice. It is an institutional failure being repeated once again in respect of people who are already survivors and victims of the system.

The Government's special advocate has expressed concern at how many survivors are being left behind. Women who spent time in State maternity hospitals, children who are denied recognition because they did not spend six consecutive months in an institution and families broken by forced adoptions and lifelong secrecy are all being excluded again. Excluding people from redress undermines the very apology the State gave in the first place. How can the State claim to apologise while actively leaving some survivors behind?

I will read from a letter from Ms Catherine Coffey O'Brien, who is with us today. She writes:

Twenty-five years ago we were given an official State apology. An apology along with legislation and redress was given to us by the Irish State but what was it for? It was for mass rape, starvation, beating, deprivation of education, the destruction of many families and the robbery of culture, issues which have never been properly addressed.

That speaks to the extent of the abuse and the horror that was visited upon people and their families.

My party leader, Deputy Holly Cairns, has spoken powerfully about the Government's callous and discriminatory approach. She has argued that the redress scheme feels more like an obstacle course that people are supposed to jump through rather than a pathway to recovery and justice. Holly has highlighted the pattern - eligibility narrowed, timelines rushed and trauma ignored. The Bill continues down that road. We have the enhanced medical card, but that is meaningless for some survivors because it does not guarantee access or trauma-informed care. There is no contributory pension for decades of unpaid forced labour. There is no legal obligation on religious orders or pharmaceutical companies to contribute a cent, something that even the special advocate has called out.

The Bill once again places the burden on survivors to make themselves eligible to the State, to apply, to wait and to accept what they are given. Human rights have to be at the core. Rather than looking at this through a legal lens, we should be looking at it through a human rights lens. That would bring greater equity and justice for survivors.

Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)
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I do not need to list and detail the crimes committed in the residential institutions operated chiefly by religious orders on behalf of the State. We are unanimous in our condemnation of this abuse, and I am sure in our belief that those abusers who are still alive should be punished to the full extent of the law. The others who facilitated, covered up and denied the abuse should have to acknowledge their complicity and pay reparations to the victims and survivors of that abuse. A number of organisations whose members have been responsible for some of the most horrendous examples of abuse have deliberately and cynically put their assets beyond the reach of victims by transferring them from one body to another. This is particularly but not exclusively the case for religious orders, which in some cases have transferred a significant amount of their wealth from into the possession of trusts administered by lay organisations. This allows the orders to claim poverty and avoid paying redress, should they become liable to do so. I became familiar with this kind of behaviour during the financial crash, when it was quite common to hear of developers going bust after first protecting their assets by transferring them to their wives. We cannot allow religious orders and others to use this developers' wives-type scam to evade restitution. A recent “RTÉ Investigates” programme showed that the Christian Brothers alone held, sold or transferred 800 properties from their ownership over the past 35 years. What has happened to these properties? Who holds ownership of them now? Most importantly, what has this done to help those who were abused by members of the order?

My Labour Party colleague Deputy Bacik published the civil liability (child sexual abuse proceedings against unincorporated bodies of persons) Bill in 2024. This Bill addresses the issue and would enable the State to compel religious organisations and others to pay redress to those who survived horrendous abuse in residential settings. It would also address the imbalance of power that currently exists by facilitating civil proceedings against unincorporated bodies such as religious orders and provide a mechanism for recovering assets from associated lay-run trusts to which assets have frequently been transferred. By supporting Deputy Bacik's Bill, the Government could show that it is serious about addressing historical abuse in residential settings and compel guilty organisations to take responsibility for their crimes.

Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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I acknowledge my friend and colleague Victor Boyhan, who laid details of his private life not just before the House but also the country in order to advocate on behalf of those he lived with and those he had lived experience of. He is one of the great heroes of this entire debacle. I also acknowledge the ladies in the Visitors' Gallery who quietly advocated outside the gates of Leinster House in wet and cold weather. Your bicycles outside the gate, your teddy bears on the wall, all of that brought the message home to us.There has been some discussion about the religious institutions and, yes, religious institutions were horrendous but let me go back to the time of my childhood. When a girl found herself pregnant the first thing was to bring her to a particular priest in a particular church in Galway and arrangements were made for her to go on holidays. These girls went on holidays and many of them never came back. They were pregnant. My father, who was born in 1905, was as Victorian a man as you could find. When it came to a girl being pregnant outside of wedlock he would ask what she did that was unnatural. I thought it was such a humane approach to take.

I worked in the Magdalen laundries on the heaters for the washing machines. I saw the girls who were there. Some of them had Down's syndrome. Some of them were girls who had fallen pregnant. Some of them were girls who, I understand, were too good-looking to live in society. It is absolutely shocking what we did.

A year after her husband died, a cousin of my mother's mother found herself pregnant. On hearing this, her father-in-law took her two sons and dropped them in Letterfrack and took her daughter and dropped her in an orphanage. He had her committed to a mental institution. After the committal to the mental institution she had the child. My grandmother went to visit her and that same man came to my grandmother and told her nobody was ever to visit her again. Years later - I am talking about 70 years later - my mother was in Merlin Park hospital in Galway where she heard the surname of a man. She went to the man and told him it was a very peculiar surname and that she had relations of that surname. The man became totally overwhelmed. He had been looking for his relations. It turned out he was the half-brother. He was the child of the pregnancy. After 70 years he was reunited with one of his brothers and his sister. The youngest of the three originally put into care died in Letterfrack. When we would ask his brother what happened he said they beat him to death.

What my colleague has said about the religious institutions is right. If they are not willing to pay up, we should seize what they have and force them to pay up. Constitutional rights can be set aside, as we saw during the financial crisis, when a state wants to do it. If a religious institution has assets that would pay for some of the damage that has been done, then it should do so.

I would also ask the question today as to whether any one man in the State has ever come forward and said he fathered one of those children. Does anybody know of a man who was said he was responsible for Mary Whatever-her-name-is or Julie Whatever-her-name-is being put into a Magdalen laundry or sent to Bessborough House and that having had his way with her, he deserted her? I have never heard of one man coming forward. I grew up in Salthill in Galway. There were girls who found themselves pregnant and went away. I know some of them now have a relationship with the child they had but I also know none of the guys I hung around with ever came forward and said they were the father of the child. In fact, they would use the entire resources of their family to deny fathering a child.

Let us be honest about it. We can blame the church and anybody we want but it was a societal issue. We talk about the religious doing it and it was them and nobody else knew anything but when I grow up in Salthill in Galway the great cry was, "If you do not behave yourself I will send you to Letterfrack". People knew what was going on in Letterfrack. I also worked in Letterfrack with my dad. I worked in the kitchens there. I saw the young lads brought down from Dublin to the back end of Connemara to be flogged whenever it suited whoever was there. It was a societal issue.

I will say that €3,000 towards the cost of healthcare for people living outside the country is simply not good enough. There has to be a way in which people who have critical or chronic health issues as a result of their treatment can have ongoing support. I agree with Senator Boyhan that Martin Fraser, our ambassador in London, has a particular grá for those who were in institutions. I have to compliment him on what he is doing. He is a wonderful man.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I am privileged to support the Bill and I thank Senator Boyhan for all his hard work. He said something important to me which I had never really thought about. This was that there are victims walking the corridors of Leinster House. Behind us we have Catherine and Sheila, two very powerful women. I have worked with them for many years on institutional abuse and the mother and baby homes.

We must be clear that while financial compensation is necessary, no amount of money can repair the damage done to those who suffered in these institutions. What survivors often describe as being equally important is being heard and believed and their experiences being acknowledged. Catherine Coffey has given me a letter, as she has to many Members. Several parts stand out for me. Many Traveller children were taken, never to be seen again. At Traveller events many women speak about the bogeyman, as they did years ago, when Travellers lived on the sides of the roads. Even when I was growing up, my mother would tell me to be good or the bogeyman would come and get me. Travellers have always been failed by the social care system in Irish society. Still today, sadly, there are Traveller women in prison who have no access to their children. They were also failed in mother and baby homes, as Catherine rightly states. I know Catherine is a proud member of the Traveller community herself.

One thing about Sheila and Catherine is that they do not make it all about themselves. In another part of the letter that Catherine wrote she said the Irish State should treat the survivors of industrial schools and their dark history with the respect it deserves and put an end to the suffering so they can all move on and make the best of the little of life they have left. The childhood of these women and their lives were taken away by the State, unfortunately. Catherine also speaks about how her human rights and equality were taken away as a child and sets out what the survivors are looking for. Senator Boyhan has in the Bill, which the Civil Engagement Group supports, equal access so people can have basic care now in their older age, something they never got as children. All they are looking for is basic care with regard to health, education and social housing.

Other Members have spoken about people living outside the country who left because of ill treatment at the hands of the State. For them to only get €3,000 is not on. I hope the Department will consider this and value people who moved outside the country with equal respect. I can say no more, except that we support Senator Boyhan. These survivors in later life are only looking to be treated with dignity, respect and equality of opportunity, something they were denied as young children. Again, I thank Sheila and Catherine for sharing their experience with us over the years. I thank the Minister for bringing forward this very important legislation.

Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for taking the time and making it a priority to be here this afternoon to listen to the lived experiences of all those who have advocated on behalf of Sheila and Catherine. It is really important that the people who are watching this debate online this afternoon see the Minister present and the priority her office and team have given to this. The Minister has the floor.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach. I thank my colleagues and acknowledge the very powerful words that have been spoken today. I also acknowledge all survivors, their strength and resilience and their voice. Without it, we would not be here, and none of the changes that have happened over time would be possible. I acknowledge Sheila and Catherine, who are with us today. As my colleagues have rightly done, I acknowledge Senator Boyhan. I thank him for his advocacy, not just on his own behalf but on behalf of so many others who did not have the opportunity to be here. I commend their strength and resilience and the way in which they have not let this define them but enabled it in order to support so many others as well. I really acknowledge that and their voice here today.

I am absolutely committed to working with all colleagues here in supporting victims and survivors, as we all are, for the very simple reason that they are our grandparents, parents, siblings, children, friends, work colleagues and members of our community. There is not one of us impacted either personally or by those around us by what we are discussing here today, not just children in industrial schools and reformatories but the litany of abuse that was inflicted on so many young people and those who are vulnerable. There is an onus on every single one of us to do everything we can to protect our children - all children - in this State; those who are most vulnerable and who need our help the most. We must do everything we possibly can to ensure that these forms of abuse never happen again.

That requires institutional change in every sense of the word. It requires societal change. It requires us to have these very difficult conversations. It requires difficult decisions to be taken, be it through legislative means or otherwise. It means making sure those who are responsible acknowledge it, not just the State - we have heard today about the various apologies - but also our religious groups and orders. I agree with Senator Boyhan; I do not think we can say that about every order and those in it. In fact, we cannot. I know we cannot because we all know wonderful people in our churches. However, there is more the churches need to do in terms of finance and acknowledging their role. We need to continue to ensure that their role is much stronger than it has been. Where funding is required, we must certainly ensure that this is to the fore and that the institutions pay much more than they have.

We have touched on different aspects of the Bill. As I said, we are using the Bill to try to close a door or anything. The purpose of the Bill is to put on a more permanent footing supports that are in place, such as the €1 billion or so that has been made available through the redress scheme. We are going to build on that and provide additional supports.

Housing supports amounting to approximately €70 million provided for various needs through the scheme, and approximately €20 million has been provided in respect of health. These were once-off payments, however. What we are trying to do with the Bill is provide supports on a continuous basis. I appreciate that there is more we need to do, be it in our engagement with Sage Advocacy or further engagement with victims and survivors, which has to happen in many different ways, or in our support for those living abroad. I acknowledge the different agencies and organisations that support survivors abroad. We need to do more to support them in their work. I am absolutely committed to doing that.

I also acknowledge those who have advocated for what we are discussing today. I refer to Patrica Carey in particular, but also to all those who have engaged and worked with my Department and my predecessor, Deputy Foley, to get us to this point. I want to see these supports provided as quickly as possible. I want to ensure that we can put in place these measures, whether it be for education, health or otherwise, as quickly as possible.

I welcome the support of colleagues for this legislation. I am very happy to engage between now and the Committee Stage on the various issues that have been raised.

What is proposed will never erase or put a stop to the trauma that has been inflicted on so many people, as we have heard, in many different ways. When we consider what happened in our past, it is very difficult to imagine that was the world we lived in. Thankfully, however, we have, in many ways, moved on and changed. We need to make sure that we continuously acknowledge and support those who were impacted and do everything we can to make sure that young people and children and those who are vulnerable are not impacted in today's world.

Again, I thank those who spoke. I look forward to engaging further with Senators on Committee Stage and on Report Stage. I acknowledge Sheila and Catherine, who have just left the Chamber.

Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister very much for her contribution.

Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael)
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Next Tuesday.

Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.