TDs will shortly meet with survivors.“Our minds are being played with,” says Bethany Home survivor Derek Leinster.
They thought their battle for apology and redress was over for one whole day this week, but then their hopes were dashed.
Enda Kenny said in the Dáil last Wednesday that Justice Minister Alan Shatter, was “looking at the question of the Bethany Home”.
The flames of hope were fanned when Education Minister Ruairi Quinn, said the survivors should have the same treatment as Magdalene survivors.
But then last Thursday, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice denied the Magdalene redress scheme could be extended to Bethany survivors.
The Bethany Home in Rathgar, Dublin, was not a Magdalene laundry but it was a refuge/detention centre for Protestant women which society wanted out of the way.
It functioned as a mother and baby home, but had appalling health and safety standards, leading to the seemingly preventable deaths of many babies and children mostly during the 1930s.
In 2010, 219 unmarked graves of Bethany babies and children were discovered in Dublin’s Mount Jerome cemetery.
Bethany’s main similarity to the Magdalene homes is that the State used the same excuse not to give an apology or pay redress in both cases: That they were privately run.
This position has been rowed back on as regards the Magdalene homes, but not as regards Bethany.
The survivors say they should have been included in earlier redress schemes:
“I’ve been 11 years watching other people having their pain dealt with, but not us. That’s what I can’t take,” says Mr Leinster.
He and the other survivors believe that it is because they are Protestants, not Catholics, that they have been left out of redress.
It was confirmed that Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald has convened a meeting of TDs in Leinster House today (Thursday) so the survivors can tell their stories.
Mr Leinster and his wife Carol have cancelled their return to the UK to attend the meeting, although they have limited means and have never received any funding.
TDs and MLAs from every party on the island of Ireland have supported the survivors’ case for an apology and redress.
Mr Leinster says no issue has ever achieved that before.
“We’re creating something in Ireland that the Good Friday Agreement was set up to achieve,” he says. “The graves have achieved that.”