Who is popular today?

Opposition parties have criticised the Government’s planned new redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes and said the Minister for Children needs to “rethink” the plans.
The Cabinet approved a scheme on Tuesday which would see all mothers who spent time in institutions eligible for payments ranging from €5,000 to €65,000, depending on how long they were there.
A stipulation that children must have spent at least six months in a mother and baby home to qualify for redress, however, has left adoptee survivors “devastated” they say.
Children who were sent to live with families, or “boarded out” will be ineligible unless they first spent six months in a home. The department acknowledged on Tuesday this would be “very disappointing” for some.
Speaking outside the Dáil on Wednesday, People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the exclusions from the scheme were “unacceptable” and he criticised the decision to give different payments to different survivors based on the length of time they spent in an institution.
Mr Boyd Barrett was born at a mother and baby home in 1967 and was later adopted.
He said he himself had no idea how long he spent in the institution.
“It is not acceptable that there should be arbitrary cut off dates for redress, or not giving redress to particular cohorts based on arbitrary cut off dates. That completely fails to take into account the individual circumstances and trauma that people may have suffered.
“In many cases, people who were through baby and homes would not even know some of these dates and may find it difficult to find out. I know in my case I do not know how long I was in a mother and baby home. The point is, I know from experience, there is a lot of your early life, if you were in a mother and baby home, you would not know of.
“There needs to be a thorough investigation of this scheme.”
Under the planned scheme, general payments range from €5,000 for those who spent less than three months in an institution, to €65,000 for survivors who spent 10 years or more in an institution.
Mr Boyd Barrett said that “to have tables, where if you were this long in the mother and baby home you get this much completely fails to take into account to individual circumstances. It differs.”
He said: “Somebody who could have been in a mother and baby home for three or four months may have had a very happy outcome, while other people who might have been in for three or four or months, it might have fundamentally impacted them, it might have traumatised them or it may simply have completely changed their life in a way that is lifelong.
“Those individual circumstances need to be taken into account in assessing the level of redress that people get from any scheme being established by the Government. To do any less than that is quite insulting of the individual stories, often tragic stories, that people suffered.”
He said it was “absolutely shocking” that children who were boarded out and spent less than six months in an institution will not be included in the scheme.
“Many of the circumstances in which people were boarded out were quite horrific and terribly tragic. To exclude that cohort is absolutely unacceptable. The Government better rethink it.”
Sinn Féin spokeswoman on children Kathleen Funchion described the scheme as “an affront to survivors and in no way makes amends for the gross human rights abuses they have had to endure”.
“The exclusion of infants who spent less than six months in a mother and baby or county home from accessing an enhanced medical card or redress demonstrates to me that survivors have not been listened to.
“Infants were taken from their mothers, they were stolen and, in some cases, shipped overseas. The Government is effectively telling these children that their forced separation and suffering isn’t worthy of compensation and telling the women, that their suffering could be worth only €5,000.”
Apologised
Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman on Wednesday apologised for saying that children who spent less than six months in mother and baby homes would not remember their experiences.
Speaking on Tuesday as the scheme was announced, Mr O’Gorman said: “In terms of the six month period, that is a period within which the children, I suppose, children who were in there less than six months would not have been aware of their experiences, would have been too young to remember their experiences.”
Mr O’Gorman apologised for the remark on Wednesday. He told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland: “If I said that yesterday in the press conference, that is a very inartful way of me to describe the experience and I apologise for that, but I am clear of the need to focus on that length of time in terms of providing a measure of people’s suffering in these in institutions, but also of allowing people to access these payments easily without them having to come to give evidence and be retraumatised.”
Mr O’Gorman said that through his engagement with survivors he was acutely aware of the trauma that they had experienced from their time in the institutions and from the fact that families were broken up. He was now seeking to redress this, he said.
The Minister also said that a counselling scheme specifically for people who were boarded out was being developed, but that there were not any plans at present for a separate redress scheme for children who were boarded out from mother and baby homes.
Mr O’Gorman said he would be prioritising older survivors, they will be awarded compensation and medical cards “late next year”.
The Minister said he wanted to be honest about the length of time it will take for legislation to be passed and scheme to be implemented. This criteria would ensure that every mother would receive “some” payment.
Mr O’Gorman said he recognised that some survivors would be disappointed with the redress scheme, but he wanted an easy way for survivors to access funds without being retraumatised.
He wanted the scheme to be up and running as soon as possible, but he had to be honest about the length of time it would take to implement, he said.