Flaw in mother and baby homes redress scheme could cost State hundreds of millions

The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill, which is currently under legislative scrutiny, excludes 40 per cent of former residents who were born in a mother and baby home and spent less than six months as a child in one of the 44 listed institutions. The Bill, however, inadvertently makes hundreds of thousands of married women who gave birth in the institutions eligible for redress.

The authors of the Payment Scheme Bill appear to have assumed that the 44 institutions included in the redress scheme were standalone mother and baby institutions that catered exclusively for single expectant women and their children. This criteria did apply to institutions such as Bessborough, Sean Ross and Castlepollard but most institutions included in the redress scheme offered maternity services to all women, regardless of marital status.

One institution covered by the redress scheme is Cork County Home and District Hospital/St Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork – one of the institutions included in the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

The commission looked at Cork County Home until 1960, when it ceased to provide long-term accommodation for single expectant women and their children. St Finbarr’s maternity hospital, however, continued to operate until 1997 providing maternity services to single expectant women, either self-referred or admitted from Bessborough, and to married expectant women.

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The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill, as it stands, states that the criteria for eligibility for redress relates to “a person who, while the person was a child or while the person was an adult, or both, was resident in a relevant institution for reasons relating to the person’s pregnancy, or the birth or care of the child born as a result of the pregnancy”. The scheme does not stipulate that the redress scheme is open to single women only. It is open to “any pregnant or unmarried mother who was resident in a mother and baby or county home institution for any period of time”.

From 1922 to 1998, the period covered by the redress Bill, about 150,000 women were admitted to Cork County Home and District Hospital/St Finbarr’s Hospital as maternity cases – 75,000-100,000 women were admitted after 1960. Under the terms of the redress scheme every one of these women would be eligible for the minimum €5,000 payment – a cost of €75 million-€100 million to the State. And this is just one institution – there are 43 more to be considered.

[ Redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes approved by Dáil ]

[ Access to mother and baby homes redress scheme to be widened ]

The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth has estimated that 34,000 people will qualify for financial payment under the scheme at a cost of €800 million. It seems clear, however, that the redress scheme in its current form is open to potentially hundreds of thousands of applicants and costings which could run into billions.

To exclude married women from the redress scheme would discriminate against married women who were long-term residents in mother and baby institutions. Most of those women were admitted to institutions from the 1970s with extramarital pregnancies.

Any move to exclude married women who gave birth in a county home or any other institution covered by the redress scheme is likely to result in independent legal action. Married women were subject to the very same institutional conditions as their single counterparts – sometimes side by side in the same maternity wards.

This is not the first time that the quality of thought that informs redress schemes in Ireland has been found wanting. As pointed out by Judge Yvonne Murphy in the Commission of Investigation’s Second Interim Report, the government’s decision to exclude most mother and baby homes and all county homes from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme in 2002 is highly questionable.

Children who were resident in mother and baby institutions unaccompanied by their mothers were in the same position as children who were resident in industrial schools and orphanages covered by the 2002 redress scheme and should be eligible to apply for redress in the same way and under the same conditions.

A number of people born in mother and baby institutions who are ineligible for redress under the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme are taking legal proceedings to claim eligibility for redress under the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme.

The rationale for the inclusion of industrial schools and reformatories in the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme is clear – they were certified, financed and regulated by the State. In response to the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, the Association of Irish Local Government (AILG) referred to county homes as “homes which were run, staffed, managed and financed entirely by the county councils”. The AILG stated that: “The personnel [in county homes] were not – contrary to the media narrative – from religious orders but were all lay people.”

The AILG noted the inevitability of a publicly funded redress scheme and resolved that such a scheme would cover the liabilities of local authorities. The association also acknowledged, however, the very real possibility “that some survivors of the county homes would take independent legal action against the county councils”. As 34 of the 44 institutions listed under the Mother and Baby Institutions Redress Bill were certified, financed and regulated by county councils, this is a very real prospect.

And although some politicians and advocacy groups are calling on the religious orders who were involved in running the standalone mother and baby homes to foot the redress costs, it is clear that the State was responsible for most of the institutions covered by the Bill and it is the State that will ultimately bear the fiscal liability.

Michael Dwyer is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was a senior researcher with the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and author of Bessborough: History & Controversy.