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RICHARD BOYD BARRETT gave a powerful speech in the Dáil last night during a debate on the redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes.
The scheme was debated for over four hours yesterday evening.
The majority of amendments put forward by the opposition were rejected and, as it stands, some 24,000 survivors are excluded from the scheme.
It doesn’t include people who spent less than six months in an institution as a child.
The scheme also does not specifically cater to people who were boarded out as children, a precursor to fostering; people who were subjected to vaccine trials; and people who experienced racism or other discrimination in the system.
Opposition TDs from across the board called for the scheme to be extended to include all survivors.
Boyd Barrett, who was born into a mother and baby institution, gave a very powerful speech during the debate.
The People Before Profit TD said the redress scheme should finally give people who passed through the mother and baby home system “the closure and the justice that they deserve” – but that’s not happening.
Boyd Barrett told Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman: “After all that they have suffered, all they have been through, all they have had to fight for, you should be, and this day should be the day when they get that closure and they get that justice.
“And instead, as you well know, they’re not going to get that.
And tens of thousands of people are going to feel excluded and insulted, and that the abuse and the suffering and the injustice they suffered at the hands of the Church and the State for decades and decades and decades continues.
Boyd Barrett said that thousands of people are being excluded from the scheme on “arbitrary grounds”.
The Dún Laoghaire TD said the scheme is “an insult to every mother and child who suffered separation, who were in the mother and baby homes, because it shows a singular failure by the Government to understand the crime and the abuse”.
He questioned how the Government devised “an arbitrary, unjustifiable scheme which includes some, excludes others, and that has a league table with a price tag on it which, if you like, commodifies your suffering”.
Speaking about his own experience, he said: “I’m an adoptee, as you know. I was born in a mother and baby home, I was in a couple of them actually because I was sent off to England, ushered out, you know, out of sight, child of a fallen woman, illegitimate child – that’s how mothers and the children were characterised.
“And then brought back, I don’t even know how long I was in a mother and baby home.
I don’t know and it’s irrelevant whether you were one week, one day, six months or two years because the central crime the Church and State committed was the primal wound of separating a mother from their child – which has, from the minute that it happens, a lifelong effect on mother and child, a lifelong effect.
“It is the primal wound that begins on day one. In some cases, and I have to say, I always say it, my story turned out to be lucky. I eventually was reunited with my mother and I was adopted by a wonderful family.
“But the truth is – whether your story and what happened was terrible, and for some it was terrible, absolutely terrible all of their lives, they suffered all of their life because of that primal wound, inflicted by Church and State.
“But every one of them, whether they were boarded out, suffered abuse, mothers forced to work essentially as slaves, shamed all their life, the stigma of illegitimacy, whatever it was.
To a greater or lesser extent, everybody had a crime committed against them from day one, when they were torn of the arms of their mother or the mother had their child born out of their arms.
“From day one, their lives and the lives they would have lived were taken from them because of the twisted perverted morality of Church and State that deemed some people ‘legitimate’ and some people ‘illegitimate’, and fallen women.
“I mean, shocking, perverted, twisted stuff and then we have a league table and arbitrary exclusions, a failure to acknowledge the individual’s specific suffering that some people may have suffered because of being boarded out, because of discrimination, because they were mixed race or whatever it is. It’s shocking and still no justification.”
Referencing the anti-refugee and anti-migrant protests happening in Ireland in recent weeks, Boyd Barrett said women and children were abused by many Irish people and Irish institutions over the years.
“I have to say, one of the particularly dark, terrible ironies of something else that’s going on at the moment, is there are very dark and sinister forces running around this city for the last few weeks, claiming utterly falsely that vulnerable, desperate immigrants and asylum seekers are a threat to women and children in this State because they are foreigners.
Well, actually, those people need look no further than this house – the political institution that is supposed to represent the Irish people – and the religious institutions, Irish religious institutions, Irish political institutions, that orchestrated decades and decades and decades of systematic abuse of mothers, of children.
“It is not poor, desperate immigrants or asylum seekers, but the State that is continuing to do this and insult and abuse those who suffered,” he said.
Boyd Barrett appealed to the minister, even at this late stage, to consider amended the Bill. He also called on the Government to seize the assets of religious orders who refuse to pay redress to survivors.
“For God’s sake, do not negotiate with the religious organisations that were responsible. There is no negotiation required, take their assets off them and make them pay the redress… and compensation for the crimes that they committed. We shouldn’t be talking to them, we should be telling them.”
The Government has repeatedly defended the redress scheme, saying it is the largest initiative of its kind in the history of the Irish State and will cost around €800 million.
Addressing the Dáil, Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman said he is “acutely aware” that no one scheme can adequately address the “pain suffered by survivors of these institutions”.
He said the Government is committed to helping survivors, noting that the redress scheme is one part of a wider response which includes granting adopted people and others access to their personal records, and the excavation of the site of the former mother and baby home in Tuam in Co Galway.
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Fair play to him for standing up not only for himself but all the others the suffered. Shame on this government and those before that covered it all up and now won’t do what is right for the survivors of this abuse.
Astonishing to again see the Greens support what is obviously a discriminatory piece of legislation. They have allowed themselves to be totally subsumed into the brutal neo-liberal ideology of their two partners in government. It seems there is no Green Party member willing to act to save the party.
@Jim O’Sullivan: they have always sold their souls for power Jim. That’s the only reason they’re in it oh and extra taxes on the ordinary person. The sooner they’re extinct the better
@Jim O’Sullivan: the Greens, AKA the Blueshirts on a bike.
Well done Richard, fantastic speech last night. Nice to see you making Mr O Gorman uncomfortable in his seat given the way he has treated tens of thousands of survivors. They are no better than FF and FG of the 40s and 50s etc. They try to say they are compassionate and understanding of our situation by “allowing” us access to our information. Well done again Richard, shame on that lot.
I’m not a big fan of himself or his party, but I have to agree with him on this one.
This guy makes a lot of sense
Not a fan of Boyd Barrett but I have to agree with him 100%. The Catholic Church should have their assets confiscated if they don’t contribute substantially to the redress scheme.
The prime movers in sending most “fallen women” to these institutions were the families of the young girls, who considered them an embarrassment and wanted them out of sight of the neighbours while pregnant. I saw this first hand, even in the 70’s girls I knew were shunned by their families for keeping their babies or forced by the parents to go away to have the baby and only allowed home after they had given up their newborns for adoption. It was not unheard of, believe it or not, for the girls themselves to choose this latter course of action, because of social and emotional pressure (“it would kill my father if he found out” being one reason I personally know of). So I know very well that you can’t lay it all on the church or the state. There also has to be some limit to the liability of the taxpayer for things that happened in the past. How about redistributing some of the the assets of those who inherited farms, businesses and assets from the grandparents to compensate those babies? Or maybe a levy on the over 60’s for guilt by association. Surely that would make as much sense as expecting the young taxpayer who was not even born then to pay compensation.
@Joan Murray: And who made the young girls families think like that? The Church.
Why are the Government not making them pay with their vast wealth?
@Tom’s: give me a break. There were enough independent minded people back then who werent slaves to societal groupthink to illustrate that we are all individually responsible for our own failure to be kind. And in England in the 50’s, a society not known for it’s catholic ethos, the same attitude prevailed, as recently revealed in interviews (recently broadcast on BBC) with unmarried women who were forced to give babies up for adoption.
@Joan Murray: Nice to think there is someone defending the Catholic Church.
The priests and nuns and Christian brothers using their positions of power to physically mentally and sexually assault innocent children.
Have you heard what happened in Tuam have you heard about the nuns taking money for the adoption of children or the drug trials on children in mother and baby homes.The Catholic Church created a toxic society.
I’ll give you a break when you educate yourself about what went on in the last 100 years.
@Tom’s: as someone who made her own mind up by the age of 18 not to be dictated to by the church, long before it became fashionable and the easy option it is today, I am not going to be gaslighted by someone who probably jumps on any popular bandwagon to make themselves look good and fit in. We are not talking about clerical sexual abuse here, but about the treatment of unmarried mothers by all levels of society, cultural and religious organisations, neighbours and particularly family. Back then fitting in, keeping up appearances, meant hiding an out of wedlock pregnancy from the neighbours. It was also quite common for some better off families to have daughters and wives (and some sons) committed to mental asylums for breaking sexual taboos, though the nuns were obviously handy for disappearing inconvenient women either temporarily or permanently. And this was not confined to catholic countries. Blame the nuns for mistreating these women once in their clutches, but in most cases it was the families who put them there.
@Joan Murray:For your information I don’t jump on band wagons to make myself look good.I am particularly interested in the Mother and Baby home situation because my mother gave birth to a baby in St Patrick’s Navan road and that baby is me.So you’re wrong again.Maybe you should think before shoot your mouth off.
no such thing as a fallen woman!.. just a cruel social construct. Fair dues to Barrett.
Convents made millions, providing laundry service to hotels etc. using slave labour….nice.
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