Mother and baby home survivors call memorial plan ‘a waste of money’
Group say centre is not what fund was meant to be used for
A PLANNED centre for research and remembrance of industrial schools, Magdalene laundries and mother and baby homes is a ‘waste’ of money and ‘no good’ to those affected, according to some survivors.
Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman updated survivors this week about the planned centre – to be converted from the old Magdalene Laundry on Dublin’s Seán McDermott Street – saying that he and the Taoiseach had ‘brought key project documents to Government for approval’.
The minister said a public consultation last year had received almost 220 responses and that a planning permission application would be submitted after Easter.
However, some survivors have argued that a memorial centre was never asked for and is not the intended use of the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund.
Maurice Patton O’Connell, who is a member of Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse (SRIA), said the fund was set up ‘to provide for the needs, supports and services of the survivors of the industrial schools’ and ‘not to fund any memorial, research or sites of conscience’.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘A lot of survivors do not want this. It’s the academics that pushed for it, not survivors.’
Mr Patton O’Connell was taken from his mother (herself shunted between institutions) as a baby and remained in an industrial school in Co.
Kerry until age 11. He was then boarded out to a farm
and later sent to a reformatory school in Dublin between the ages of 13 and 16.
He was sexually abused in childhood and thinks he
may have been subjected to a vaccine trial which caused permanent scarring on his lungs.
Though reluctant to appear to be in competition with other survivor groups, Mr Patton O’Connell said it was framed that way by one department official when he was part of a consultation panel.
The official told the industrial schools’ group they had better ‘get our pitch in before the mother and baby [survivors] get their pitch in because there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’.
He pointed out that there are ‘different levels of abuse that people went through’, with those
who suffered in industrial schools often coming off worst.
‘They went through beatings, rape, starvation, mental abuse… Most people suffered that between the ages of six months to 18 years. Whereas you come to the mother and baby homes and they were in there for maybe six months, yet they’re getting the same redress scheme, or even a better scheme than the industrial schools got.’
SRIA is calling for housing support, access to the Health Amendment Act medical card and an annual pension, as given to Magdalene laundries survivors.
‘We were scrubbing floors at four years of age,’ he said. ‘We were making rosary beads at four years of age. We worked hard in these orphanages or industrial schools.’
Mr Patton O’Connell said the drawn-out nature of the struggle for redress is ‘all about money’.
He said: ‘All they’re doing is waiting for us to die. It’s 25 years since Bertie Ahern apologised [to abused children on behalf of the State] and we’re still fighting.’
Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon, whose constituency includes the site of the proposed centre, told the MoS a space ‘to reflect on a true history of Ireland’ is ‘absolutely essential’.
He said: ‘I think it’s going to make a huge difference to the community that it’s in, in terms of transforming that area, but I think most importantly, it’s going to acknowledge the parts of our history that are a little bit darker.’
He said the centre and an adequate redress scheme should not be mutually exclusive, but said problems with access to appropriate redress are ‘a horrific stain on this present Government’.
He said: ‘I think when we talk about remembrance and how we commemorate, it’s also for future generations. It’s also to ensure we never repeat those wrongs.’
‘Academics pushed for this, not survivors’