Bethany victims deserve redress

In agreeing to implement one of the principal recommendations of Mr Justice Quirke’s Magdalene report that all lump sum payments to survivors of the Magdalene laundries be exempt from tax, Finance Minister Michael Noonan, in the course of Budget 2014, has made a virtue of doing what is right and moral.

A more accurate reflection of the Government’s moral compass is the persistent refusal to include the Protestant victims of the Bethany Home in Dublin in the Residential Institutional Redress Act, 2002.

It is absurd and indefensible that abused children of Bethany are less cherished by the State than children of similar institutions. So much for the Government’s promises during the Children’s Referendum of 2012.