Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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537. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the reason institutions (details supplied) were omitted from the mother-and-baby institutions payment scheme, despite the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth advising that they should be included; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15426/23]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme will provide financial payments and a form of enhanced medical card to people who spent time as mothers or children in Mother and Baby or County Home Institutions. The institutions covered by the Scheme are those identified by the Commission of Investigation as having had a main function of providing sheltered and supervised ante and post-natal facilities to single mothers and their children. The institutions listed in the question are not included in the Scheme as they do not meet this criterion.

It is important to note that the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill allows for the addition of any institution to the Scheme which was established for the purpose of providing maternity and infant care services and the placement of children for the purposes of adoption or care arrangements, and in respect of which a public body had a regulatory or inspection function. If an institution has been found to meet these criteria it may be added in the future.

The decision not to include other institutions or care settings in the Scheme is not intended to disregard or diminish any person’s experience and the Government recognises that there are people who suffered stigma, trauma and abuse in other institutions, and outside of institutions, who will not qualify for this Scheme.