Mother and babies homes information sealed for 30 years
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MAKES A FINAL BID TO BRING CHANGE TO THE BIRTH INFORMATION & TRACING BILL 2022
The Members of SALI appeal to the Irish Senate!
*The Irish Senate can introduce important changes to the Birth Information & Tracing Bill through their "cream list" amendments process - we call on them to make those changes*
SALI, the Separation, Appropriation & Loss Initiative, has provided commentary on the Birth Information and Tracing Bill (BITB), since it was first published by Minister O’Gorman. The latest version of the BITB was offered as a compromise to the many voices of concern that had been raised against its provisions.
SALI has noted the Minister’s intent on forcing through a number of provisions, following the publication of the Commission of Investigation’s report into Mother and Baby Homes. This is being done with the apparent aim of bringing about resolution to a number of injustices to the Women and Children, who had suffered within these Institutions. The government’s ambitious timetable has left little time for discussion, analysis and change. Indeed, SALI has noted how many valuable amendments offered by campaigners and TD’s have been rejected; unless changes are made, it is the opinion of SALI that the BITB will create serious imbalances and bring about further challenges in the courts.
To that end, SALI has noted that as the BITB is now entering its final stage of scrutiny, there still remains the possibility that valuable changes to the proposed legislation could be made by Senators, utilising the “cream list” method of importing important clause changes. SALI has already written to all Senators in the Oireachtas, enclosing their copy of their suggested changes to the Bill. Such changes include:
The Language & Opening Statement of the BITB;
Substantial changes to Part 2 of the Bill;
Comment on the limiting methodology of the BITB;
The requirement to remove the need for formal Information Sessions;
Warnings about the nature & essence of historical ‘informed consent’;
Examination of the GDPR and the Relevant Body;
The current failure of the Stakeholder Advisory Group;
The requirement to extend the rights of the entire family line;
The absolute necessity of taking possession of Church & Religious Records and the failure of the current clause;
The fundamental error & failure to recognise and deal with the obvious cross-border issues, and
Further commentary on the recent O’Mahoney recommendations
It is SALI’s opinion, that the Irish government has some way to go if it intends to deliver on the Rights of those who were subject to adoptions and/or illegal adoptions.
Breeda Murphy states:
"Heritage and family connection matters quite a lot in Ireland. Imagine growing up not knowing your clan, to whom you belong. That is the lived and living experience for many of our Irish citizens. It is not due to the fact that records do not exist, but from a concentrated effort by both State and Church to conceal identities from adults, who wish to find their birth family. The reasons for withholding such evidence are unclear but ownership is power and in this case that power is exerted in a most cruel fashion”.
She adds:
"My relative who will be 89 in May of this year, had his details, birth date and surname changed and so it would have been virtually impossible to find him via documentary sources alone even if the State allowed that. DNA technologies unlocked the puzzle of his birth and early life, and records were held within the Council, the hospital and Church where he was baptised, but were unavailable from the Religious Order that ran the Orphanage where he was placed. It took fourteen months of painstaking genealogy based research, with the help of extended family trees here and overseas to provide David with his true identity and a heritage that we can trace back hundreds of years”.
She concludes:
"This legislation must acknowledge the State’s duty of care to its Citizens without distinction. It is a ‘processor’ of information pertaining to adoption, fostering of boarded out children and must allow unfettered access on request, to enable family reunification within a clear supportive framework, in acknowledgment and recognition of human rights applicable. We have the opportunity now to right an injustice, let us ensure the Bill enables rather than restricts those seeking birth and early life documentation and information”.
Eunan Duffy states:
“Closed, illegal and forced adoptions are still in operation in parts of this modern world, even in the misnomered "civilised" world. Adoption and other 'care' arrangements have been used predominantly within a inter-country and domestic trafficking system to satisfy the needs of others over the best interests and needs of the child too often, and this system can be likened to a 'witness protection program' where a new identity is created at the expense of a personal and familial history, heritage, culture, bio-physiology”.
He adds:
“Withholding the truth and identity, concealing illegal and criminal activity yet pervades society as facilitators and profiteers remain at large in their malignant complicity”.
He concludes:
“This BITB compounds the removal of autonomy, agency, integrity and human rights afforded to the non-adopted and falls way short of internationally-recognised and inherent human and moral rights. Access to records that restore truth and provenance, genesis and humanity should not be debatable nor denied to any individual. Shared and mixed information is owned, relevant and entitled to each person when it affects the very being and existence of each person. Secrecy, privacy, truth and disclosure must be considered on a case-by-case basis with no arbitrary ultimate veto afforded to the mother nor adopted person. Skilled and best-informed practitioners who must now take a 'maximalist-disclosure' approach must be the only way forward. Knowing what we know, being who we are, living the truth of where we come from and making personal choices based on our information is the basic right of all”.
Frank Brehany states:
“It was disappointing at the Committee stage to witness the failure to adopt and perhaps consider the value of the many amendments that were offered. I can truly understand the desire for any Minister to bring about the necessary change in any given area, but the speed at which the processes stemming from the Mother and Baby Home report, will I fear present further difficulties down the road if government doesn’t take the time to carefully consider the serious issues before them. I am proud to be the co-author of the SALU report on the BITB and sincerely hope that Irish Senators will give good consideration to these important issues and develop a “cream list” of amendments. If they do so, they will send a powerful message to government, that getting it right now, not only delivers Justice for the many adoptees, but will also ensure that less legal risks will present themselves for future governments”
http://www.frankbrehany.com/media/1200/sali-report-bitb-2022-17322-final.pdf
The Separation, Appropriation & Loss Initiative: An Scaradh, Toiliú agus Cailleadh Tionscnamh
Injustice | Recognition | Restoration |Accountability
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Commentary on the Birth Information and Tracing Bill, 2022. An examination, analysis and recommendations
Authors: Breeda Murphy, Eunan Duffy & Frank Brehany
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'Mother and Baby Home Update'
April 8, 2022
'Breeda Murphy, Eunan Duffy and Frank Brehany discuss the latest on the burials bill and redress scheme.'
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It's a legacy issue that needs to be dealt with until proper closure is found but RTE do appear to have an endless appetite for docus on the subject, something on about once every two months at this stage
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It shows a callousness that was prevalent at that time. The church must be protected and defended at all times, even at the cost of human lives. Disgusting stuff and the good news is that the church is no longer the force it was in the country and it will only get weaker.
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Still happening today but as much about FF and FG trying to whitewash their own legacy. These people had to fight government every step of the way remember.
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I've seen much reporting and hopes for greater access to information and its extremely important. There is an underlying and serious issue that those searching for information may be in for quite a shock and it's how little information and records have been retained or lost. Records of children's homes, Mother and Baby homes, industrial schools etc should have been sent and retained by old health boards and eventually taken over by Tusla.
My own situation is not Mother & Baby home related or adoption, but access to my family information and circumstances that led to be being placed into state care for nearly 16 years. Now 54, I decided to look for some information.
I've been astonished, not just at the complexities involved but how poor record keeping was in relation to state care and children's homes generally.
On making initial contact with Tusla (and I can't fault them) it was discovered the home I was in, didn't exist in any records they had, this despite the home featuring in the Murphy report and the mother and baby redress scheme and being overseen by one of the old health boards. Essentially a home, that had 3 units to include a convent had 2 units that they were not aware of. Each housing 14 children at one time.
The order of Nuns was easily identified so Tulsa made contact , I obviously had to supply ID, and some personal information. A short time later I received a registered letter from the order , who also were behind the magdalen laundries.
A very nicely worded letter from the orders archive section, confirmation of my Admission (Aged 2) and year but no record of my departure and confirmation my file had been sent to the HSE on the homes closure, there was 3 photo copies of pages out of a ledger with mostly redacted info and that was it.
So back to Tusla and various sections, departments, offices being contacted by them within the health service to find out were my records are. Keep in mind , i also had a social worker assigned to me. 9 months on, still nothing found but the Tusla case manager does keep me in the loop.
I share this story only to highlight what is ahead for many people. State Care/ Children's Homes were in many respects ran like mother and Baby homes and if my home is anything to go by , I'm one of 100's of children in one home that Essentially didn't exist from a records point of view. I should add, I had something to work with, a full birth cert , a letter from a brother (13 brothers and sisters I've never met) and some snippets of info to hand to include primary and secondary schools attended .
Where someone who has incorrect birth cert or no info about their adoption or those in mother and Baby homes start is just beyond me.
Is maith an scáthán súil charad.
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How would anyone who was registered illegally even know they weren't the biological children unless the family or Tusla informed them?
It is an awful situation, criminal activity with a horrendous impact on those affected, possibly children & grandchildren, thousands of people and families using the wrong name for decades.
The RTE report said they've only identified a few hundred but that special rapporteur said there could be at least 20,000 cases of illegal birth registrations and the state has known about them since the 1950's. That's just mind boggling.
The couples who registered and raised those children as their own are just as guilty as the individual doctors, agencies, religious and state who all colluded to break the law and steal other peoples children. It's hard to imagine what kind of mindset thought that was ok.
Any person adopted through the proper channels has some hope of finding their information when the law eventually changes, but how will the stolen children find the truth?
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Its good that people are made aware by RTE of all that happened and how people were treated. It was shocking to watch how traumatised those people were in the last two reports about illegal birth registrations. Most of those in the report were older people.
How would any one of us feel if we found out at their stage in life that we had been living a lie our entire lives? Being lied to by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, the betrayal and shock must have been terrible.
I remember about 10 years ago there was a story in the news & lots of media reports plus the gardai & social workers got involved, when it was thought that a blond-haired child had been stolen by a Roma family. There was a big investigation and it turned out to be untrue.
Yet the state has been aware since the 1950's about thousands of illegal "adoptions" and still have done nothing about it?
So yes there are frequent reports but they are necessary until the state sorts out the big mess it helped to create for thousands of our citizens. And that particular scandal is in addition to the mother & baby homes, magdalen laundries, children sent illegally to the US, babies disposed of in sewers, children being used as guinea-pigs for pharmceutical companies. The whole thing is sickening.
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Holly Cairns on the Institutional Burials Bill in the Dail. She makes some very good points around delays and flaws in the bill.
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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Alice Litster was a shining light in the misery of the Mother and Baby homes.
Breda O'Brien: It took almost 100 years to hear Alice Litster shouting stop (irishtimes.com)
She was one of a number of women inspectors employed by the State who are described as pioneers, valiantly attempting to improve conditions for women and children.
In the midst of so much that is deeply depressing, I began to wonder about the people who did shout “stop”, out of a deep conviction of the dignity of every human being.
She was described by one bishop as 'a troublesome spinster who thought she knew everything about what was best for babies'.
For example, she says in one widely cited report from 1939 that, “the chance of survival of an illegitimate infant born in the slums and placed with a foster-mother in the slums a few days after birth is greater than that of an infant born in one of our special homes for unmarried mothers....I have grave doubts of the wisdom of continuing to urge Boards of Health and Public Assistance to send patients to the special homes so long as no attempt is made to explore the causes of this abnormally high death rate.
It was courageous in 1939 but it is omitted from her final typed report. It was not the only time she was censored. In 1943 she was told to remove references to “miserable scraps of humanity, wizened, some emaciated, and almost all had rash and sores all over their bodies, faces, hands and heads” from a report on Bessborough.
Irish society took a long time to listen to those who shouted stop about the Mother and Baby Homes. While that story is not yet over, perhaps we also could ask ourselves what practices that today are seen as not only acceptable but essential, will be looked back on with horror tomorrow?
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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Many people have spoken clearly about Direct Provision. It's a no-brainer as something we'll be apologising for in 30-50 years.
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i know but everyone who says something is dismissed as an extreme leftest or 'them foreigners complaining'
The information is not filtering through people don't know the abuse that is going on in direct provision...
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Oh they know all right.
The same way they knew perfectly well about industrial schools and m&b homes.
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The excavations of the mass grave still hasn't started but people are doing their best to keep the pressure on the government.
A charity marathon from Osnabruck Germany will arrive at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home site tomorrow at 10am.
Led by John McGurk, the group of German runners will arrive at the Tuam site following a six day trek across 6 countries, in honor of the thousands of babies that died in institutions.
A survivor of the Lockvale boy’s home in Drumfries in Scotland, John McGurk visited the Tuam home site last August to lay 796 white crosses for the babies buried there.
The group of runners will be welcomed by Catherine Corless, survivors, families and friends at the mass grave in Tuam.
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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About time really.
Historian welcomes Tuam mother-and-baby home progress (rte.ie)
Ms Corless, whose research prompted renewed examinations at the site, said the passage of the Institutional Burials Bill was a great relief.
Her research identified that there were no burial records for 796 babies who died at the home between 1925 and 1961.
The legislation was approved by the Houses of the Oireachtas last night and is now being referred to President Michael D Higgins for his consideration.
It is planned to then return remains to the families of the deceased, or to re-inter them in line with the wishes of relatives.
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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If proof were ever needed that the Mother and Baby home report was a complete whitewash.
'Despicable': Anger as plans to carry out review into Mother and Baby Homes testimonies scrapped
Roderic O’Gorman said a new initiative will now be rolled out.
THE GOVERNMENT HAS abandoned plans to carry out a review of testimonies given by victims of Mother and Baby Homes, it has emerged.
Last year, Minister Roderic O’Gorman said that he intended to appoint an international human rights expert to go through written evidence submitted to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission.
However, the Irish Examiner reported this morning that this idea has now been scrapped in favour of another initiative.
A statement released this evening on behalf of O’Gorman’s department states that “the Minister believes that a new initiative to support survivors to tell their personal story, so that it can be formally recorded and accepted as part of the official record, provides the best opportunity for responding to the concerns of survivors in a meaningful way”.
Survivors of the religious homes had called for their testimonies to be independently examined after it emerged that the commission of investigation, which submitted its final report in 2020, had discounted their testimonies as they were not taken under oath.
Despite the new plans, Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns said O’Gorman had “betrayed” the survivors of these institutions.
“It is truly despicable that survivors have found out, via the media, that this review has been scrapped. The Minister failed to inform survivors it was not going ahead – even though, it appears the Minister made a decision early on to abandon it.”
She added her scepticism about the new plans.
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This new can will be kicked repeatedly down the road.
Any update on the leaked report Minister?
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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Religious orders yet to agree to pay into mother and baby home redress scheme (irishexaminer.com)
Religious orders yet to agree to pay into mother and baby home redress scheme
The six religious orders involved in Mother and Baby homes have yet to agree to pay towards a redress scheme a year after it was announced.
Children's Minister Roderic O'Gorman and his officials remain in discussions with the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland, as well as religious congregations, however, no agreement has been reached on the amount that will be contributed to the State redress scheme.
The Government cannot compel the orders to make any payment, but it is requesting orders to help pay for some of the cost of the €800m redress scheme, which Mr O'Gorman hopes to have in place in the coming months.
A spokesperson for the Department of Children said the Government believes that all relevant parties have a "collective responsibility" to respond to Ireland's legacy in relation to the Mother and Baby institutions.
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They made their money and have huge wealth but as usual stay silent on righting the wrongs. Ongoing shame on them.
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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Well done to O'Gorman for finally publishing the 2018 report by the Mother and Baby Home Collaborative Forum (survivors and advocates).
It showed what we all knew - O'Reilly and Zappone were constantly dragging their feet constantly.
Mother-and-baby report critical of former ministers (rte.ie)
Mother-and-baby report critical of former ministers
The First Report of the Collaborative Forum of Former Residents of Mother and Baby Homes criticised the 2016 Adoption Information and Tracing Bill and former Minister for Children Katherine Zappone's intention to progress the legislation that she inherited from her predecessor James Reilly.
The report also described forum members' engagement with the Child and Family agency as "demoralising and frustrating" and it described the suggestion that TUSLA would take control of records of older survivors as "astonishing, regressive and a measure of unbelievable crassness and insensitivity".
In December 2018, the report was given to Ms Zappone, but it was never published in full.
The current Minister for Children, Roderic O'Gorman, has published the report, however, Susan Lohan, co-founder of the Adoption Rights Alliance and member of the collaborative forum, has described it as "too little, too late".
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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Well done to the people of Mayo for helping to this government get a move on. Delay upon delay.
Hundreds attend memorial event for Tuam babies (rte.ie)
Hundreds of people have attended an event in Castlebar, Co Mayo, tonight to commemorate those who died in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home.
The names of the 796 infants and children for whom there are no burial records were read out by people who gathered along the shores of Lough Lannagh in Castlebar.
The event was organised as part of the ongoing campaign to ensure that the "significant quantities of human remains" that are buried on the site of the former home are exhumed and analysed.
Campaigners say that while the Government has passed legislation to allow this to happen, the appointment of a director to oversee the process is not happening quickly enough.
Catherine Corless, the historian whose work uncovered the burial of infants in chambers at the mother and baby home, said she was disappointed that yet another event had to take place to try and spur the Government into action.
She described tonight's commemoration as "overwhelming" and paid tribute to the hundreds of people from around Co Mayo who turned out to take part.
A total of 208 babies with Mayo parents are among the 796 for whom there are no burial records.
In that time, a total of 802 children died at the facility. For all but six of them, there are no burial records.
What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
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That attitude is what led to the current failure and refusal to deal with this. So wrong
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What attitude would that be?
People lived in a society that was beholden to a church that a ridiculous level of power, influence and control. Able to freely indoctrinate with it's "morals" but free to ignore those same morals when it's money and power would be affected.
The church is responsible for it's atrocities no one else.
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Lack of balls / backbone / moral-fortitude - or whatever you want to call it.
We know there were cases where families did not send their unmarried daughters of orphaned children to m&b homes or industrial schools. Anne Lovett's family, for example. I can name others in my immediate family, and I've met others who say similar.
So it WAS possible.
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Really? If they hadn't been sent there, the church wouldn't have been able to commit and cover up it's atrocities.
You need to try a bit harder with the deflecting. Ignoring the church's control on society isn't going to wash
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The Government intends to pass its Mother and Baby Institutions ‘redress’ scheme through the Dáil this Wednesday. Shockingly, the scheme excludes 40% of survivors and denies healthcare to two-thirds.
Minister O’Gorman’s scheme excludes everyone separated from their mother before the age of 6 months in a Mother and Baby Institution or County Home. The Minister has no logical explanation for this.
The exclusion ignores the lifelong consequences of forced family separation and loss of identity for these 24,000 people. The Government plans to deny these survivors recognition, in a blatant act of discrimination.
The scheme does not recognise abuse in adoptive or ‘boarding out’ placements despite repeated survivor testimony which the Commission of Investigation’s Confidential Committee described as a ‘stream of similar accounts of beatings and abuse of all kinds’.
The scheme also prohibits mothers institutionalised in 13 Mother and Baby Homes from claiming a ‘work payment’. This is no doubt based on the Commission of Investigation’s insulting finding that the forced unpaid labour of girls and women in Mother and Baby Homes ‘was generally work which they would have had to do if they were living at home’. The scheme also denies an ‘enhanced medical card’ to mothers institutionalised for less than 6 months.
Please join us in calling on the Government immediately to:
- Expand the redress scheme to include all those who spent time in a Mother and Baby Institution or County Home, and to make an enhanced medical card available to all
- Extend the scheme to anyone abused in a ‘boarding out’/adoptive placement or abused through forced labour, vaccine trials, racial or disability-based discrimination or illegal expatriation outside the State for adoption, by allowing affected people to swear their testimony in a non-adversarial way.
The Government claims its scheme pursues the ‘twin tenets of “act with kindness” and “do no harm”’.
In reality: The scheme’s exclusions heap abuse upon abuse.
The High Court has declared eight times that the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation proceeded illegally by denying survivors the same opportunity given to religious and State institutions to comment on the Commission’s draft findings.
In its Final Report the Commission of Investigation characterised affected people as unreliable witnesses whose testimony may have been ‘contaminated’ by meeting with other survivors or the influence of media coverage.
The Commission of Investigation further concluded that the nature of violence suffered by boarded out children ‘cannot be established’: despite its Confidential Committee recording tens of graphic descriptions of extreme violence such as serial rape, routine whipping, servitude, abject neglect and denial of education.
The Government’s own survivor consultation report found:
‘There were numerous harms and human rights violations identified by survivors for which reparation was needed. The primary was the loss of the mother child bond and relationship … The harm caused by psychological, physical and sexual abuse, including degrading and dehumanising treatment received in the homes and in unvetted family placements through adoption, fostering or boarding out was also clearly identified.’
The all-party Oireachtas Joint Children Committee and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission have called on the Minister to amend the redress scheme.
Minister O’Gorman: Believe survivors. Do the right thing. Widen the redress scheme now.
Click here to email all TDs and Senators
Click here if you are having difficulty using the email link.
_____________________
STARRY: You can use below text - add to or delete whatever, if you wish - or write your own text
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http://clannproject.org/redressemail/
Dear TDs and Senators,
The Government intends to pass its Mother and Baby Institutions ‘redress’ scheme through the Dáil this Wednesday. Shockingly, the scheme excludes 40% of survivors and denies healthcare to two-thirds.
Minister O’Gorman’s scheme excludes everyone separated from their mother before the age of 6 months in a Mother and Baby Institution or County Home. The Minister has no logical explanation for this.
The exclusion ignores the lifelong consequences of forced family separation and loss of identity for these 24,000 people. The Government plans to deny these survivors recognition, in a blatant act of discrimination.
The scheme does not recognise abuse in adoptive or ‘boarding out’ placements despite repeated survivor testimony which the Commission of Investigation’s Confidential Committee described as a ‘stream of similar accounts of beatings and abuse of all kinds’.
The scheme also prohibits mothers institutionalised in 13 Mother and Baby Homes from claiming a ‘work payment’. This is no doubt based on the Commission of Investigation’s insulting finding that the forced unpaid labour of girls and women in Mother and Baby Homes ‘was generally work which they would have had to do if they were living at home’. The scheme also denies an ‘enhanced medical card’ to mothers institutionalised for less than 6 months.
I call on the Government immediately to:
1) Expand the redress scheme to include all those who spent time in a Mother and Baby Institution or County Home, and to make an enhanced medical card available to all survivors.
2) Extend the scheme to anyone abused in a ‘boarding out’/adoptive placement or abused through forced labour, vaccine trials, racial or disability-based discrimination or illegal expatriation outside the State for adoption, by allowing affected people to swear their testimony in a non-adversarial way.
The Government claims its scheme pursues the ‘twin tenets of “act with kindness” and “do no harm”’.
In reality: The scheme’s exclusions heap abuse upon abuse.
The High Court has declared eight times that the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation proceeded illegally by denying survivors the same opportunity given to religious and State institutions to comment on the Commission’s draft findings.
In its Final Report the Commission of Investigation characterised affected people as unreliable witnesses whose testimony may have been ‘contaminated’ by meeting with other survivors or the influence of media coverage.
The Commission of Investigation further concluded that the nature of violence suffered by boarded out children ‘cannot be established’: despite its Confidential Committee recording tens of graphic descriptions of extreme violence such as serial rape, routine whipping, servitude, abject neglect and denial of education.
The Government’s own survivor consultation report found: ‘There were numerous harms and human rights violations identified by survivors for which reparation was needed. The primary was the loss of the mother child bond and relationship … The harm caused by psychological, physical and sexual abuse, including degrading and dehumanising treatment received in the homes and in unvetted family placements through adoption, fostering or boarding out was also clearly identified.’
The all-party Oireachtas Joint Children Committee and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission have called on the Minister to amend the redress scheme.
Minister O’Gorman: Believe survivors. Do the right thing. Widen the redress scheme now.
Yours sincerely,
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“This is the final opportunity for the Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman to address the litany of grave wrongs perpetrated on innocent women and children. It is unconscionable that this redress scheme will exclude 24,000 people who suffered systemic abuse at the hands of the State and religious orders.
“Shockingly, 40 percent of survivors will not be eligible for compensation, while two-thirds will be denied healthcare.
Government has one last chance to amend deeply flawed redress scheme - Social Democrats
STARRY: Above quote from Social Democrats' plea to TDs & Senators might be a good one to include in your email. See below:
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H E L P !
Echo Chamber Podcast@EchoChambersPod
“The Govt are about to ram through a redress scheme that seeks to exclude 40% of people affected by the Mother and Baby Homes Report. New Podcast out now, and we need you to help!
Tony - Pod Guy - Groves@Trickstersworld
We’ve lifted the paywall immediately on this. @EchoChambersPod
with @BrownNollieb & @maeveorourke of the @clann_project . Please listen and help!
Apple:
https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-echo-chamber-podcast-tortoise-shack-media/id1301985342
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/59MOwqe3j8gx55Rbf52bfR?si=LJ0ClNloRDepsa_7Zn-zDA&nd=1
Episode Description
"It was a pleasure to be rejoined on the podcast by Mother and Baby Home survivor, writer and actor, Noelle Brown and human rights barrister and pro-bono co-director of clannproject.ie, Dr Maeve O'Rourke. We just wish it was under better circumstances. On Wednesday the government will attempt to ram through a redress scheme based on the High Court discredited Mother and Baby Homes Report that will see up to 40% of the people impacted excluded! This cannot happen. While the amounts are derisory, (forced separation of mother and child is €5,000) the scheme itself only adds insult to injury and compounds the trauma suffered by our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers and fathers. Please let your TD know that this is not good enough.
Please click
Survivors excluded again: Widen the unfair Mother and Baby Homes redress scheme.
and show your support.
Tony - Pod Guy - Groves@Trickstersworld
"Please listen and share this short clip on the huge problems with the Govts redress scheme for the people affected by the Mother and Baby Homes. We are compounding trauma and injustice here. Let your TD know that it’s not good enough!
Full episode:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/59MOwqe3j8gx55Rbf52bfR?si=9E3J3Dq6QYe1AKAfMHRjhw&nd=1
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Irish Examiner@irishexaminer
"The Government has been urged to expand the mother and baby home redress scheme as the current proposals simply "heap abuse upon abuse".
@Elaine_Loughlin and @ococonuts [Conall O’Fatharta] neport
‘Current mother and baby home redress scheme 'heaps abuse upon abuse'
Elaine Loughlin and Conall Ó Fátharta
Tue, 31 Jan, 2023 - 17:45
Current mother and baby home redress scheme 'heaps abuse upon abuse'
“The Government has been urged to expand the mother and baby home redress scheme as the current proposals simply "heap abuse upon abuse".
"Campaigners say the scheme is "flawed" as it excludes 40% of survivors and denies healthcare to two-thirds.
Dr Maeve O'Rourke@maeveorourke
‘The Department of Children has refused to release details of how the terms of the scheme were decided, claiming this information is "not in the public interest" and publishing it "may only serve to cause unnecessary distress to an already vulnerable group".
Current mother and baby home redress scheme 'heaps abuse upon abuse'
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Report of the Interdepartmental Group (IDG) on the development of the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme
November 2021
Schedule 3
Table 2
Starry: ^^^ First scale for a mother’s stay in a Mother and Baby Home less than six months is €5,000 for lifetime loss of your child, BUT in return for this derisory payment you have to give away all your legal rights.
Dr Maeve O’Rourke says one form of litigation from this Redress Bill will be UNCONSTITUTIONAL DISCRIMINATION <----- and that is inevitable.
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STARRY: BELOW IS ABOUT BABIES BEING INELIGIBLE FOR REDRESS IF THEY SPENT LESS THAN SIX MONTHS IN AN INSTITUTION
^ EXPERTS SAY IT DOES NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE LIFELONG IMPACT OF FAMILY SEPARATION AND EARLY TRAUMA ^
“HERE, BARRISTER SEAN BEATTY LOOKS AT THAT DECISION AND QUESTIONS THE GOVERNMENT’S REASONING BEHIND IT.”
Dr Maeve O'Rourke@maeveorourke
"Important analysis by Seán Beatty BL @ICCLtweet, clearly indicating that #MotherandBabyHomes redress Bill = unconstitutional discrimination. Minister @rodericogorman , please don’t force survivors to the High Court.
Everyone who is concerned: please visit
Survivors excluded again: Widen the unfair Mother and Baby Homes redress scheme.
*PUBLIC INTEREST*
‘Analysis The six-month rule for Mother and Baby Homes redress does not add up’
‘Barrister Seán Beatty says the government’s six-month rule around compensation is impossible to justify.’
'Seán Beatty is a barrister and former Procedural Rights Fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.'
Analysis: The six-month rule for Mother and Baby Homes redress does not add up
Legislation governing the redress
[...]
THE MOTHER AND BABY Institutions Payment Scheme Bill 2022 (“the Bill”) is designed to provide financial redress to Mother and Baby Homes survivors. Substantial concerns have been raised with the proposals it contains.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the failure of the government to provide any convincing reasons as to why the Bill does not remedy one of the most troubling issues: that children resident in an institution for fewer than six months will be entitled to no compensation whatsoever.
The action plan
The government has stated time, time, and time again that the Bill is merely a single aspect of a larger “action plan”. A wide-ranging solution is helpful. But the breadth of a plan cannot paper over cracks created by its lack of depth.
Each element has a purpose—the omission of a group of survivors from the Redress Scheme is a clear failure of its purpose. The broader action plan does not cause this concern to disappear. The plan’s effectiveness clearly depends on each facet being executed correctly.
Expanding on Commission report
Another oft-repeated element of the government’s reasoning is that “[w]e did not limit ourselves to the limitations that the commission set out”, and that the plan is “much broader and encapsulated a greater number of survivors and former residents than anything the commission put forward.”
This relates to the fact that the Bill expands on recommendations contained in the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (“the Final Report”).
Yet the Final Report has been the subject of sustained criticism. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (“the Minister”) settled litigation brought by survivors which resulted, among other things, in a statement being appended to the Final Report highlighting 64 impugned paragraphs. Therefore, an improvement on its recommendations is no more than the bare minimum and cannot insulate the Bill from criticism.
Access to information
The government relies on a view said to be expressed by survivors who resided as children in institutions that their “overwhelming priority need” was access to information and birth certificates. This has been recited often (see here, here and here).
The government appears to believe it supports the decision not to make children who spent fewer than six months in an institution eligible to receive a redress payment. It is difficult to see the sense in this.
First, even if it is true that prioritising access to information was the initial view received by the government, it was just that: an initial view. Views can change. Why the government is wielding an initial view in this way has not been explained. Were those individuals aware that their initial view as to the priority between payment and access to information would later preclude them from access to payment?
The voice of survivors since the announcement of the six-month requirement has been diametrically opposed to it.
Second, should the government stand by this initial view, it was only ever a view in relation to priority. Priority relates to the order in which actions are taken, not that the only item on a list to be attended to is the first.
Refined payment bands
The Minister has stated that he “improved the overall payments approach by introducing more refined payment bands that will benefit many applicants to the scheme.” This refers to the first proposed time bands for the calculation of payments in the General Scheme of the Bill being as follows: (i) for mothers only, fewer than 3 months and 3–6 months, and (ii) for mothers and children, 6–12 months, 1–2 years, 2–3 years, 3–4 years and so on. The Bill itself amended this and is more specific.
For example, rather than a band of 2–3 years, it includes bands of 721–810 days, 811–900 days, 901–990 days, and 991–1080 days. Under the previous proposal, survivors resident for two years and 11 months would receive the same payment as those resident for two years and 1 month. Under the Bill, those extra 10 months will be recognised and additional payment will be provided.
This demonstrates the government’s view that individual days matter. And these new payment bands also apply to children: a child resident for 451–540 days will receive €1,250 more compensation than a child resident for 361-450 days. In other words, Child A who spent 451 days in an institution will receive €1,250 more than Child B who spent 450 days there. One single day’s residence is of importance for children under the Bill, but only, apparently, after six months (180 days).
How can day number 451 be worth €1,250, but days 1–179 be worth nothing? The inconsistency in the introduction of more refined payment bands, while allowing the six-month rule to remain, has not even been attempted to be adequately explained.
Memories and trauma
As previously reported: “When asked why some children have been left out of the scheme at a press conference announcing the redress package, the minister yesterday said: ‘I suppose children who were in there less than six months wouldn’t have been aware of their experiences and would have been too young to remember their experiences.’”
'No understanding of trauma': Survivors hit out at 6-month rule & legal waiver in redress scheme
On 21 November 2021, a group of 34 clinicians wrote an open letter to the Minister stating: “Firstly, childhood trauma, which includes separation from primary caregiver and exposure to multiple caregivers in an institution setting, has the greatest impact early in childhood… [W]e know that early separation from a caregiver is intrinsically stressful and has long-lasting impact throughout the lifespan.
Over 30 experts ask O'Gorman to change redress scheme so it considers 'impact of early trauma'
Thus, to state that young children, who might have been in Mother and Baby Homes for a period of 2-3 months early in life were less impacted by those who spent longer, is simply not scientifically correct. Indeed, the opposite is true. The earlier the impact of trauma the more long lasting the effects. Secondly, there is no quantum of time that allows us to think about the impact of childhood trauma. Thus, having an arbitrary period of six months’ exposure is simply that, arbitrary.”
No scientific reasoning has been provided by the government to dispute this expert view. On the contrary, when the Redress Scheme was initially announced, the government expressed that it was: “…very conscious that the separation of a mother and a child is a deeply, deeply traumatic event. That’s why every mother who was in one of these institutions will be able to qualify for payments… that’s a very significant increase in the scope of this scheme.”
'No understanding of trauma': Survivors hit out at 6-month rule & legal waiver in redress scheme
The suggestion that it is possible to acknowledge the trauma associated with the separation of mother and child while producing a scheme which declines to offer compensation to a category of children who were separated from their mothers simply defies reason.
Conclusion
The government has not offered sufficient reasoning to justify the six-month rule. Two possible conclusions may be drawn. First, these amounted to the height of the government’s justifications and, being meritless, must lead to amendments. Second, there are further reasons, as yet undisclosed, as to why the six-month rule has been imposed. Should that be the case, survivors deserve to know what they are.
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The M+B Home redress bill will be debated from 4pm today.
It is listed to be shown live on Oireachtas tv at 4.30pm today.
It is being covered on Claire Byrne now.
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