Excluding some survivors from the mother and baby home redress scheme is causing people anger, distress and retraumatisation, the special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse has said.
The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme’s “restrictive eligibility requirements” have enforced a “hierarchy of suffering” according to arbitrary criteria, said Patricia Carey who has published her first report.
Excluding certain survivors from the scheme, including those who were boarded out or fostered out and those who spent fewer than 180 days in institutions as a child, “are arbitrary criteria and perpetuate the harm caused by the State and the church”, the report notes.
“The fact that those boarded out as young as five years of age to work unpaid on farms and as servants have never been included in any redress scheme is a stain on the whole of Government response institutional abuse,” said Ms Carey.
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The report also highlights the exclusion of survivors who died before the State apology on January 13th, 2021, which has prevented the families of those who died from making an application for compensation.
Ms Carey, who was appointed special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse in March 2024, met more than 1,300 survivors of institutional abuse and forced family separation in Ireland and overseas during her first year in the role.
During this time, Ms Carey heard first-hand accounts of “beatings, sexual and physical abuse, forced and unpaid labour as well as hunger and lack of care, education and family life”. Many survivors left Ireland after their experiences of “incarceration, confinement or abuse in institutions, or were illegally trafficked or adopted as part of Ireland’s legacy of forced family separation”, she notes.
Many survivors said providing testimony as part of the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme was “upsetting, traumatic, adversarial, difficult and distressful”, the report notes.
The report calls for survivors to have full and unredacted access to all their records, and says legislation is needed to compel religious orders and church authorities to hand over all records related to institutions and forced family separation.
The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme should be extended “to those currently excluded from redress” including people who spent time in the mother and baby home network of institutions and all those who were forcibly removed from their families, it says. All open redress schemes should be widely promoted, to encourage as many applications as possible, it adds.
Given the ageing survivor population, it is “unfair and exclusionary to further discriminate” against those who were unable to apply to, or were unaware of, previous redress schemes, says the report.
A significant percentage of survivors are residing in social housing or are on waiting lists for social housing and live in areas of social deprivation, with many voicing concerns around secondary institutionalisation in later life in nursing or care homes.
Survivors must have access to good quality, affordable social housing and should be fully supported to remain living in their own homes for as long as possible, says the report.
It also calls for the establishment of an independent investigation into vaccine trials “conducted without consent” on thousands of children in institutions in the 1960s and the 1970s. An independent DNA and genealogy service should also be established for those whose births were illegally registered and for those seeking family tracing, it notes.
There should also be greater ease of access to Irish passports for those trafficked abroad for adoption and more supports, and resources should be made available for survivors living overseas, particularly in the UK and US, says the report.
The post of special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse was created as part of the Government’s response to the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. Ms Carey’s brief encompasses mother and baby institutions; county home institutions; Magdalene laundries, industrial and reformatory school institutions and related institutions; and those adopted, boarded out or the subject of an illegal birth registration.
