Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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216. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the specific status in terms of access to financial compensation by the State for former inhabitants of the Bethany House Homes under the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25587/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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While the Schedule to the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002, specified named institutions, section 4 of the Act allowed for the insertion into the Schedule of "any industrial school, reformatory school, orphanage, children's home, special school which was established for the purpose of providing education services to 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 in which children were placed and resident and in respect of which a public body had a regulatory or inspection function" into the Schedule by Ministerial Order. Two such Orders were made in November 2004 and July 2005.

At the time these Orders were made the Department of Health and Children had advised that it was unable to locate any documentation which would indicate that a public body had an inspection or regulatory function in respect of the Bethany Home. Subsequently, in 2007 the Department of Health and Children advised that evidence of a regulatory or inspection function had been located and that the inclusion of Bethany Home in the Redress Scheme could be considered. However, as the information identified that Bethany Home operated as a mother and baby home it was not regarded as eligible to be considered for inclusion in the Scheme.

Following the publication of the Ryan Report, there were a range of requests and demands for the scheme to be extended, including a request for the Bethany Home to be included on the basis that it operated as a children's home. However, the Government of the time decided against the inclusion of any further institutions within the scheme. The decision not to extend the scheme has meant the exclusion of a range of institutions which could have been considered for inclusion. I met with the representatives of the Bethany Home Survivors Group in May 2011. While acknowledging the hurt and pain that remains with the survivors, having reviewed the papers on the Home and having taken all the circumstances into account, I found no basis to revisit the decision of the previous Government not to include the Home in the Redress Scheme.