Mother and baby home survivors to take High Court case over their exclusion from redress scheme

Irish Examiner

23-05-2025

A group of 556 survivors of mother and baby homes are to take a landmark High Court case over their exclusion from the State redress scheme.
The Department of Children approved a compensation scheme for survivors of the institutions last year, but the strict criteria means children who were in a home for less than six months are not eligible for a payment.
The criteria also includes deductions to payments if an individual spent more than 180 days in a hospital, while some notoriously brutal institutions have been excluded from the scheme altogether.
The exclusions have been widely criticised for failing to help up to 34,000 people who suffered in the institutions.
A test case, to be heard at the High Court on July 21 and 22, will seek to include other homes that are currently outside the remit of the redress scheme.
The survivors, who will be represented by the firm Coleman Legal, include:
345 survivors from eligible institutions who have been excluded from the scheme;
145 survivors from Temple Hill/St Patrick's Guild, which is not covered by the compensation scheme;
66 clients from St Joseph's home in Stamullen, which also falls outside the redress project.
The €800m compensation package offered to survivors is the largest in the history of the State, but there has been a poor uptake to date.
The latest figures from the Department of Children show 6,462 applications have been made, with 4,228 general and work-related payments processed so far.
A further 1,840 enhanced medical card entitlements have been notified to the HSE, and 520 health support payments have been made.
Solicitor Norman Spicer, from Coleman Legal, contacted the minister for children last November and again in recent weeks to try to get agreement on issues raised by the survivors but said the case was being 'fully defended by the State'.
'Among the concerns, principally, are the restrictions towards former child residents of these institutions.
'Namely, an arbitrary 180-day minimum residency requirement and the other being that many institutions which were not examined by the commission have been excluded entirely from the scheme.
'I previously wrote to the children's Oireachtas committee to highlight these concerns, and the committee roundly endorsed my recommendations to add Temple Hill/St Patrick's Guild, Westbank Orphanage, and the two Stamullen-based, St Clare's/St Joseph's institutions, to the list for redress.
It beggars belief that the minister doesn't just add these institutions and remove the 180-day rule given that at this stage it is already clear that the number of eligible applicants is far below what had been projected, and the scheme is already several hundred million under budget.
'The matters are listed for trial on July 21 and 22 and will be heard together. These proceedings are being fully defended by the State.
'We again call on Minister Norma Foley to intervene and add these institutions to the list for redress and provide some measure of acknowledgement to the survivors who are still dealing with the legacy of these wretched institutions.'
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Children said: 'The department does not comment on matters that are the subject of legal proceedings.
'That said, the Chief State Solicitors Office represents the department in respect of these legal proceedings and correspondence is not ignored.'
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