FORMER RESIDENTS of a Protestant-run mother and baby home in Dublin have urged the Taoiseach to include them in the residential institutions redress scheme.The Bethany Home Survivors group also called yesterday for an apology from the State for neglecting them and for a memorial to be erected to all those who died while in the home in Rathgar, Dublin.
Former residents led by Derek Leinster, who was born at the home in 1941, went to Leinster House to hand in letters for Taoiseach Brian Cowen and the Ministers for Education, Health and Justice, setting out their demands.
Bethany Home was open from 1922 to 1972; 219 graves of children who died there between 1922 and 1949 were found in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, earlier this year.
Most of these children died from 1934 on. The Bethany Home Survivors group argues that the State took on extra responsibility for regulating the home in 1934.
Niall Meehan, of Griffith College’s journalism and media department, who discovered the unmarked graves, said there was no doubt but that the home had been designated a place of detention by the minister for justice in 1945.
It was used to detain women convicted of crimes including infanticide and birth concealment.
It was also clear, he said, that the State was aware of overcrowding in the home and that medical staffing was inadequate. As a result they were culpable.
Mr Leinster broke down as he made clear that all he wanted was for the Government to treat the survivors of Bethany Home as Irish, as human and similar to children who had been neglected in other institutions.
In the letter to Mr Cowen and his Ministers, Mr Leinster says Bethany children were also placed with dysfunctional families. “The State did nothing to prevent children being sent to such families within the State and in Northern Ireland, chosen for religious evangelical Protestant rather than child welfare-centred criteria.”
Furthermore his letter claims the State was aware that Bethany Home was sending children to “like-minded institutions in England” which in turn “transported over 130,000 children to stock the British Empire up to 1967”.
Minister for Education Mary Coughlan said last week there were no plans to include those who had been at Bethany Home in the State redress scheme. The Labour Party and Sinn Féin support the group’s demands. Fine Gael has promised to raise the issue in the Dáil when it resumes.
SIC: IT/IE