Special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse Patricia Carey estimated between 8,000 and 10,000 people who were subjected to the practice of being “boarded out” as children are still alive.
This meant children were sent from State institutions to farms and families up to the 1970s, and in many cases treated as free labour.
Just 6,000 out of a possible 34,000 applicants have so far applied for the mother and baby home scheme. Some €62 million was spent in 2024, its first year of operation and after almost two years being open, less than 10 per cent of the scheme’s redress budget has been spent.
The special advocate said the scheme had not been widely advertised and it was pushing older people to make applications through an online portal.
“I think it would be reasonable to say they could extend the scheme to those who were boarded out,” Carey said. It would require only an amendment to the current legislation, not a new redress scheme.
The boarded out were included in Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s formal apology in the Dáil last week to those who had their childhoods “ruined” by “unforgivable” abuse in industrial and reformatory schools.
They were also included in a previous Dáil apology in 2021 by Martin to survivors of mother and baby homes.
The special advocate said “the greatest hurt” is “this is the only group that continuously receive apologies but don’t receive any financial redress”.
“Every other survivor of an institution of institutional abuse has received a financial redress package, but they have been left to one side.”
In a letter to the Taoiseach before the formal apology, Carey wrote: “I implore you to include all children boarded out from all pathways, who, as I know you are aware, experienced the most heinous levels of abuse and neglect in many instances.”
She was “shocked” after the apology was issued that they were not included because they had been sent out from State facilities some “for very long periods of time, like 10 years, some of them for weeks or weekends and then sent back to the institutions”. And “that placement was overseen by the State”.
There was no recognition of this and “many experienced the most horrific abuse – children living in barns, not fed properly, absolutely brutalised”.
During the Dáil apology and statements Sinn Féin TD Pa Daly, who has repeatedly raised the cases of survivors in Kerry, noted the Taoiseach’s comments to those boarded out that “we will continue to support you”.
He said: “It’s impossible to continue to support them when the Government have not been doing so” and they are excluded from every redress scheme.
James Sugrue (74), a Kerry survivor boarded out with his two brothers Michael and David, welcomed the Taoiseach’s apology but said the “frequent apologies” have “got to be backed up with some kind of redress”.
From Ballybunion, he spent 11 years in a local farm where he suffered sexual abuse and beatings and did not see his youngest brother for 10 years.
“My brother Michael died when he was 40, having spent years not being able to come to terms with what happened to him.”
Sugrue is to meet Minister for Children Norma Foley this month.
He said the apology was a “foundation stone” and hoped the Government would build on this, “recognise the wrongs children suffered” and “extend the hand of friendship we were never shown in State care by offering us the redress that we are entitled to”.