THE SPECIAL ADVOCATE for survivors of Mother and Baby Homes has called on the Government to stop excluding people from access to redress schemes and to their own records.
Patricia Carey said survivors have told her they have been “re-traumatised” by the Government issuing apologies to them while simultaneously excluding them from redress schemes put in place for those who spent time in institutions.
The mother and baby institution redress scheme was launched in March last year. To date, over €66 million in payments have been issued to survivors.
Around 34,000 people are eligible to apply for redress under the scheme. However, thousands of survivors are excluded, including those who spent less than six months in an institution as a child.
Carey’s first annual report was published yesterday. It found that these exclusions are “discriminatory and unjust”, and that the State “should re-examine and revise the current legislation with a view to expanding it to include those currently excluded”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, she said that survivors who receive redress “feel guilty because other’s can’t”.
“The only institutions that are covered are county homes and 14 mother and baby institutions. I know, and we know, that there were a network of over 180 institutions,” she said.
She said there are a “myriad of exclusions”, including that children who were boarded out to work on farms unpaid when they were as young as five have never been included in any redress scheme.
“In Northern Ireland, they’re going to bring in a mother and baby redress scheme where people will receive redress for one day spent. In the Republic, it’s 180 days. So that has really upset people.”
Access to records
Carey met over 1,300 survivors of institutional abuse while writing her report. She said the “biggest issue” that was raised with her was survivors being unable to access their own records from mother and baby institutions.
The Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022 was established to grants right of access to birth certificates, birth and early life information, where available, for all persons who were adopted, boarded out, the subject of an illegal birth registration, or who otherwise have questions in relation to their origins.
But Carey’s report states that some survivors have been unable to access records relating to their birth and early life and care, education, health and medical records, and their placement for adoption in Ireland and abroad.
“This is due to the records being destroyed, moved, or in private or religious ownership,” the report states.
Survivors have also experienced “ongoing challenges” in finding accurate information in their search for details of family members, as well as difficulties in accessing records such as burial and death certificates for children that died in institutions.
“Three out of every five people, they’re still looking for records,” Carey told Morning Ireland, adding that they are still in the hands of private and religious organisations.
Both the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches, private nursing homes, religious orders, still hold records related to people’s times in institutions. They have no right to hold them. They have to hand them over to the State.
She said the Preservation of Certain Records Act 2024 made it a criminal offense to move or destroy records.
“I believe that the next stage of that legislation is to take in charge those records, that they are given to the National Archives and that the people they relate to have access to their own records.”
Carey added that this needs to happen “immediately”.
“We’ve had over 200 years of people in institutions before the foundation of the State. People are aging out of this process. I had a woman who was 78 who asked for her records and was told to contact six different organisations for her own records of the time she spent in institutions.”
Carey is also calling for survivors to have access to enhanced health care, enhanced housing supports, and for the Government to include the status of ‘Survivor’ as a housing status application.
She said this would be at no cost to the Government.
“It would mean that if somebody was making an application for housing, the same way as you would say you had a particular medical issue or a disability, you would receive extra points on the housing application waiting list.
“I believe that survivor status for those people who don’t have families, who were forcibly separated from their families, or who didn’t have any early life experience at a home should be given additional weighting and status on housing lists.”