Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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Question 278: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children when the Department began inspecting the Morning Star mother and baby unit. [40301/05]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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There are no records held by the Department concerning a "Morning Star mother and baby unit". There has been a number of references in parliamentary questions and in the media to the above unit concerning the case of one individual and the Residential Institutions Redress Act. The entity concerned is correctly titled as the Regina Coeli hostel in North Brunswick Street, Dublin. Furthermore, the Department does not hold any files which suggest that there was a mother and baby unit within the Regina Coeli hostel.

A search of files retrieved from the National Archives reveals that the first record of any inspection conducted on behalf of the Department was in 1946. The inspection referred to records that the hostel catered for destitute poor, girls unable to get lodgings and unmarried mothers. These files are held by the National Archives and as such are available to the public as a matter of course. Should the Deputy require further information from these files he may wish to contact the records management unit of this Department which will facilitate him in retrieving the files.

The Department of Health and Children advised the Department of Education and Science that an inspection of files provided evidence of inspection(s) of the Regina Coeli hostel conducted on behalf of this Department. The Department of Health and Children confirmed this to the Department of Education and Science in April 2005 and asked that consideration be given to the inclusion of the Regina Coeli Hostel under section 4 of the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002. The inclusion of institutions in the Schedule of the Act is a matter for the Department of Education and Science.

The Department of Education and Science has advised that for an institution to be considered for inclusion under section 4, it must be an industrial school, a reformatory school, an orphanage, a children's home, a special school for children with a physical or intellectual disability or a hospital providing medical or psychiatric services to people with a physical or mental disability or mental illness. It must also be one in which children were placed and resident and in respect of which a public body had a regulatory or inspection function. The Department of Education and Science further advises that hostels are not one of the categories of institutions which are listed as institutions which can be considered and as such it is not open to consider the inclusion of the Regina Coeli Hostel in the Schedule.

That Department has further advised that the question of including additional institutions has now been fully considered and it is not proposed to add any further institutions to the Schedule.