Written answers
Tuesday, 9 April 2024
Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
Mother and Baby Homes
Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein)
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1084. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth what actions his Department will take to address and correct the misclassification of Neptune House, Temple Hill, Blackrock, County Dublin, as a ‘children’s hospital’, when it was at all times in practice, and commonly known as, a mother and baby home, such misclassification being in opposition to operational fact and preventing children placed there from gaining redress; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13941/24]
Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The institutions covered by this Payment Scheme are those identified by the Commission of Investigation as having a main function of providing sheltered and supervised ante and post-natal facilities to single mothers and their children.
The institution at Temple Hill, Blackrock, commonly known as St. Patrick’s Hospital, was not investigated by the Commission of Investigation because it operated primarily as a children's hospital rather than as an institution providing ante and post-natal facilities.
At page 29 in Chapter 2 of the Social History section of the Commission of Investigation report, which details the different types of institutions that existed, Temple Hill was listed as a children’s hospital and, as such, did not meet the criteria of a Mother and Baby Home - www.gov.ie/en/publication/89e43-chapter-2-institutions/. The Commission referred to the institution as being “frequently wrongly described as a mother and baby home. It was an infants’ nursery and mothers were not resident there. As a hospital, it received funding from the Hospitals Commission.”
For this reason it is not included in this Payment Scheme.
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