The mother and baby homes redress Bill is not just f lawed – it is callous, inhumane and discriminatory
IN the coming weeks, the Government will deliver the final insult to tens of thousands of survivors of mother and baby homes when it pushes its flawed redress scheme Bill through the Dáil
But the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill is not just flawed – it is callous, inhumane and discriminatory. Shockingly, 40% of survivors will be excluded from the scheme, while two-thirds will be denied healthcare.
Around €800million has been set aside for the scheme, which will be open to around 34,000 survivors of mother and baby institutions and county homes.
However, 24,000 people will not be eligible for any compensation and many survivors will only receive a pittance, despite their lifelong trauma and suffering.
Let’s not forget the magnitude of what is involved.
We are talking about some of the most serious human rights violations imaginable.
This includes suspicious deaths that were not investigated; forced labour and servitude; forced disappearances; torture or ill-treatment based on sex, race, ethnicity and class; forced family separation; nonconsensual medical trials; arbitrary detention; and interference with family life, private life and freedom of expression.
Instead of taking these harrowing experiences into account, the Government’s scheme will solely base compensation on the amount of time spent in a mother and baby home, or county home.
Those who suffered horrific abuse while boarded out or placed in unvetted foster care will be entitled to nothing. The proposed methodology of calculating payments, for those who qualify, is too simplistic and does not factor the broad range of individual experiences.
The scheme seems deliberately designed to be as divisive as possible, creating a hierarchy of victims and pitting survivor against survivor.
One of the most egregious aspects of the Government’s Bill is that the scheme is not open to anyone who, as a child, spent less than six months in a mother and baby home. Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman has yet to explain the reasoning behind this baffling decision.
We are expected to believe this is because his department does not want to upset a vulnerable group of people.
This sounds to me like Government shorthand for: ‘We don’t want to tell you why we’re shafting you.’
On what basis was it decided that the first six months of a child’s life counts for nothing? All the evidence shows that this is a vital bonding period between a mother and baby.
Yet infants were snatched from the arms of their mothers and suffered a life of forced family separation. Why is their trauma not recognised? When I first heard of this exclusion, I thought it was a red herring to distract us from the derisory compensation amounts proposed.
While no amount of money can ever adequately recompense survivors, a redress scheme should be about the State owning up to the wrongs of the past. This Bill creates the illusion of reparation but ignores the key principles of restorative justice by discounting survivors’ experiences – just as the widely discredited Commission of Investigation did before it.
Under the scheme, payments will range from €5,000 for mothers who spent up to three months in an institution to €65,000 for those who were there for more than ten years. However, as the average stay at a mother and baby home was around five months, very few survivors will receive compensation amounts at the upper end of the scale. You would get more for a whiplash injury or for falling over a footpath.
This suggests that saving money, rather than achieving justice or closure for survivors, was the key factor when the scheme was being drawn up.
We know from the Government-commissioned Oak Report what survivors wanted to see prioritised in a redress scheme.
A key finding was that payment rates should reflect the human rights abuses and trauma experienced, and not just be based on the length of time spent in an institution.
They were not alone in seeking this. In November 2021, the United Nations Special Rapporteur called for compensation to be commensurate with the gravity of the offences. The UN also called for the removal of a waiver which would prevent survivors seeking further recompense and legal accountability in court.
By railroading this Bill through the Oireachtas, the Government is exposing the State to multiple legal challenges in the future.
There is little, if any, political support for this legislation on the Opposition benches. I even suspect that some members of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party privately harbour deep reservations about the Bill’s failure to address the litany of abuse perpetrated against innocent women and children at
It should be about the State owning up to past wrongs
This will be a monument to political failure
the hands of the State and religious orders.
Given the sensitivities involved, Government TDs should have been allowed a free vote on this Bill, without fear of sanction from their parties. Those who quietly vote for this Bill in the weeks ahead must share culpability for this grave injustice.
In trying to divert attention from the scheme, the minister has made much of the new birth information and tracing legislation. This is a right that every person in the State is entitled to and is the bare minimum that mother and baby home survivors should expect. It is laughable for the Government to seek praise for providing people with their basic human rights.
There are no words to adequately describe how the State has failed survivors. They have been worn down and are tired. They know the State will ultimately win. If it was the Government’s intention to break the resolve of survivors and their supporters, they have succeeded – but it is a pyrrhic victory.
Minister O’Gorman must be aware of the widespread public opposition to this disgraceful redress scheme.
If passed, the Bill will forever taint this Government’s term in office and will stand as a monument to political failure.
It is not too late to do the right thing.