Government challenged for fighting mother and baby home survivors in courts

The Little Angels memorial plot in the grounds of Bessborough in Blackrock, Cork. File picture: Laura Hutton

A survivor of Ireland’s mother and baby homes has challenged the Government to explain why it is appealing a landmark High Court ruling in favour of those excluded from the redress scheme.

Ann Connolly, who was born in Sean Ross Abbey, has written directly to minister for children Norma Foley asking whether the State has chosen to contest the judgment — and warning that doing so would force survivors back into “trauma, delay, and uncertainty”.

In a letter seen by the Irish Examiner, Ms Connolly said the case taken by survivors Marie Thornton and John Duncan Morris had already established that exclusions from the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme were unlawful.

“If your department has now appealed that judgement, then the State is once again putting survivors through further trauma, delay, and uncertainty,” she wrote.

She questioned how the Government could claim to acknowledge past wrongs while continuing to fight survivors in the courts.

“How can this Government say it accepts the terrible wrong done to women and children in these institutions, while still resisting survivors when they finally succeed before the High Court?” 

Ms Connolly also dismissed any suggestion that an appeal could be justified on financial grounds, pointing out that some survivors received as little as €5,000 under the scheme.

“The amounts involved are minimal in the context of the harm done,” she said. 

“Which raises the question, why is the State choosing to fight this?” 

Her letter comes after the Department of Children confirmed to this newspaper it is to appeal the High Court ruling, warning that the judgement has created a “grave degree of uncertainty” around the operation of the scheme.

A spokesperson said the decision followed consultation with the Office of the Attorney General, with legal advice indicating the ruling could leave the scheme “so unclear in scope as to become unworkable”.

The department said it has a responsibility to administer the scheme in line with the legislation passed by the Oireachtas and had defended two recent judicial review cases in that role.

The High Court decision arose from a case taken by Ms Thornton and Mr Morris, who were excluded from the scheme. 

They are among an estimated 19,000 people not covered, including those who spent less than six months in institutions or were boarded out.

In his judgement, Mr Justice Alexander Owens found that the minister had erred in law when assessing whether certain institutions could be included in the scheme.

The case centered on the interpretation of a provision allowing additional institutions to be added if they provided pregnancy-related and infant care services and were subject to inspection or regulation.

However, the applicants had been in institutions providing infant care only, and argued that their exclusion was unjust.

Mr Justice Owens rejected the interpretation that institutions must have provided both types of services and found that the minister failed to properly assess the purpose for which certain institutions were established.