Some 257 applications have been received to date for the Government's redress scheme for women who had symphysiotomies, according to the Department of Health.
Applications for the scheme, which closes on Friday, continue to come in at an increasing rate, it said. Many of the applications are from women in their late 80s or early 90s.
Women who qualify for payments under the scheme will receive a payment of €50,000, €100,000 or €150,000, depending on the circumstances of their cases. Applications are being assessed by former High Court judge Maureen Harding Clark.
Groups representing the women who had symphysiotomies have advised their members to apply for the scheme, but are split on whether they should accept an award because they would first have to waive their right to take legal action.
The Department said women could opt out of the scheme at any stage in the process, up to the time of accepting an award, if they wished to pursue a legal action.
“No one will waive their right to proceed with a court cases as a pre-condition of applying to the scheme.”
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has criticised the requirement to sign a waiver of legal rights in order to qualify for payment. "Worse than that, Leo Varadkar's waiver requires women accepting payments to facilitate the impunity of those who could be held responsible for their injuries, expressly including doctors, consultants, obstetricians and the Medical Missionaries of Mary which ran a hospital (Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda) where much of this surgical abuse was perpetrated," said ICCL director Mark Kelly.
Symphysiotomy involved cutting the cartilage of a pregnant woman’s pubic bone to widen the birth canal.
It was carried out on about 1,500 women between the 1920s and mid-1980s, about 350 of whom are thought to be alive to avail of the scheme.
For many women it left permanent injuries such as incontinence, difficulty walking and chronic pain.
