William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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336. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the reason the criteria used to include some institutions in the mother and baby homes institutions payments scheme; the reason selected institutions (details supplied) where children were accommodated for extended periods, were not identified as a relevant institution and were omitted from the scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [21935/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme provides payments and health benefits to people who spent time in any of the Mother and Baby or County Home Institutions that were identified by the Mother and Baby Homes 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 institutions covered by the Payment Scheme are set out in Schedule 1 to the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023.

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.

Chapter 2 of the Social History section of the Commission of Investigation report - www.gov.ie/en/publication/89e43-chapter-2-institutions/ - details the different types of institutions that existed and whether they could be considered Mother and Baby Institutions. The Commission referred to Temple Hill 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.

The Government recognises that there are people who suffered stigma, trauma and abuse in other institutions. If it were to come to light that an institution, in which the State had a regulatory or inspection function, fulfilled a similar function with regard to single women and their children as those included in the Payment Scheme, section 49 of the Act provides that the Minister, with the consent of the Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, may insert an additional institution into the Schedule.

It is important to emphasise that the Payment Scheme is just one element of the Government’s response to the country’s complex legacy of Mother and Baby Institutions. Of the seven major commitments set out in the Government Action Plan for Survivors, six are now delivered and in place, while the seventh is well underway. Key actions include access to birth information, the services of the Special Advocate and counselling support, all already in place, as well as the ongoing development of a National Centre for Research and Remembrance.