Letters to the Editor: Shameful redress scheme must be reformed
Though Children's Minister Roderic O'Gorman received the Mother and Baby Home Commission Report in 2020, the payments scheme only opened earlier this year, 2024. Picture: Sam Boal
In reference to Sidney Herdman’s letter — ‘Calls for Westbank redress being ignored’ (Irish Examiner, Letters, August 15) — unlike him, I am eligible for a mother and baby home compensation payment.
As of yet, I have not applied.
I am demoralised by Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s long overdue scheme.
Though the minister received the Mother and Baby Home Commission Report in 2020, the payments scheme only opened earlier this year, 2024.
While some payments have been agreed, it appears nothing has been paid.
I suffer increased ill health which my neurologist says stems from my time in the Bethany Home. I can no longer walk.
Another aspect of the minister’s plan is enhanced medical coverage.
No one knows what this means, including the minister who has done nothing about it.
Would it help me? I have no clue and neither do the minister’s officials, according to applicant accounts I have heard.
I was told I was found as a baby by a social worker beside my dead mother’s body and brought to the Bethany Home.
In fact, she was forced to give me up.
She died many decades later, her few personal possessions included photos of me in her arms.
When I found that out, it traumatised me all over again.
So too did the coercive ‘adoption’ documentation I eventually was given.
The experience never ends.
Instead of adequate payments in 2021, there was huffing and puffing about access to and collection of records, with no discernable outcome.
Sheila Nunan was tasked by the minister in 2023 to talk to churches about contributing money. What was the result? We have been told nothing.
While awaiting his pittance, Bethany campaigner Derek Linster died in 2022.
Derek’s daughters applied for the scheme earlier this year.
Their letter — ‘Scheme’s clear underestimation’ — (also August 15) says it is restrictive and, ‘miserly’.
Scheme officials wrongly reduced Derek’s time in the Bethany Home and therefore the compensation payable.
What price is any justice for Sidney Herdman or for those less than 180 days resident with miserable outcomes, like Bethany’s Patrick Anderson McQuoid recently reported?
“Sorry,” says the minister. “Your experience does not officially count.”
The goal is saving money, illustrated by official whining that expanding the scheme would cost between €2m to €700m more than the €800m allocated.
On behalf of residents of all affected institutions I say reform this shoddy, shameful, cynical mess.
In Ireland, I believe it is sadly not generally recognised that autistic adults who live here actually form a significant group of unconnected individuals who are very poor at making themselves heard by the powers that be.
This is partly because, as the saying goes, ‘when you meet one autistic person you only meet one autistic person’.
We autistic people can all be quite different from each other while at the same time being strangely united by a kind of social awkwardness, various sensory difficulties, and an off-beat sense of dress.
But we autistic adults as a group very much need a higher profile than we have presently so the powers that be will be able to notice us more.
The first thing that could provide us with a higher profile along with a much-needed sense of unity and progress might be, I suggest, a regular annual musical concert where all autistic adults will be issued with an invitation to attend.
This concert could be held in any suitable venue that would be specially adapted for the sensory needs of autistic adults.
It would probably start off at first on a small scale before hopefully increasing in size as time goes by.
There should also be a special room at this concert for adults who identify themselves as being autistic.
Anything good and wholesome should be acceptable for raising the profile and level of happiness of autistic adults.
This is because we have been a silent group of grown-up men and women who have endured for too long in individual isolation the hard knocks of life.
The flagship Six One news on RTÉ broadcast on Sunday, August 18, was followed by the sports bulletin.
The lead sport item covered was a report, footage, and player interviews of the English FA Premier League.
This was followed by a scant report on double Olympic gold medal winner Paul O’Donovan’s victory in the lightweight men’s single sculls on day one of the combined World Rowing Championships.
Reports on the FAI Cup match between Kerry and Bohemians, the Women’s Inter Provincials in Rugby, and an item on the GAA followed.
This downgrading by RTÉ of Irish sportswomen and men just two weeks after Ireland’s most successful Olympic games ever calls into question the national broadcaster’s priorities.
Are we as a people, and RTÉ in particular, so filled with such levels of self-loathing that the sports department of Ireland’s national broadcaster regards English domestic soccer as more important to transmit to Irish viewers than our own domestic sport?
This inferiority complex should have exited the gene pool long ago.
As the national broadcaster and a publicly funded institution, RTÉ has a duty to project a distinctly Irish world view.
Giving Irish sports fair coverage on national television and radio would be a good start.
After announcing that he would not contest the next general election, I heard several radio interviews with Michael Ring during which he outlined what he had achieved for his own constituency, and the West of Ireland.
He even talked about his part in the Olympic medal won by Mona McSharry.
To say I was impressed would be an understatement.
Living in the Cork South Central constituency, I am very envious of the people of Mayo that we do not have anyone of his calibre here in Cork.
Simon Coveney and Michael McGrath are Cork South Central TDs who are also departing Irish politics.
I wonder just what they would list for what they have achieved for their Cork constituency?
I doubt their list would be anywhere near as impressive as that of Michael Ring.
I am fairly certain that if the Cork event centre was proposed for Mayo, it would be up and running long before now with Michael Ring around.
There is a famous picture of Simon Coveney standing next to the then taoiseach Enda Kenny as they turned the first sod on the events centre.
That was in February 2016, and the sod turning remains the only work completed on the site so far.
We also have the Cork to Limerick road with the only improvements in the last 40 years all on the Limerick side of the border.
The same can be said of the Cork to Waterford road, with the best parts on the Waterford side of the border.
Well done to the politicians in Waterford and Limerick for getting things done.
And, it is only in recent weeks that the tender for the Cork to Ringaskiddy road has been issued, decades after when it should have been built.
I doubt anyone would argue the importance of this piece of infrastructure that should have been completed decades ago.
And, of course, I must not forget to mention Micheál Martin.
In the event of a hung Dáil after the next election, would we be better off here in Cork if we had some independent deputies elected who could act as power brokers to really get things moving here in Cork?
The Constitution provides for any child attending any publicly funded school not being indoctrinated in a religion if that is the wish of its parents — ‘Irish parents face headache over school choices’ (Irish Examiner, Letters, August 16).
The practice, too, was for secular education to be separate from religious indoctrination in national schools.
The use now, by religious patrons with the collusion of the Oireachtas, is effectively subverting the Constitution which is our most important law, being made by the people.
Remarkably, subversion of the Constitution is not, as it ought to be, a crime that gardaí can enforce like any other.
