I am raising on the Adjournment the question of the Government's proposals to compensate the victims in Ireland of the drug, thalidomide. Although the question is phrased to relate to the Government's proposals, it is not easy to talk about those proposals because so far as we can ascertain, the Government have not to date disclosed their proposals to the association which was founded to look after the interests of these unfortunate children and their parents, that is, the Association for Justice for Irish Thalidomide Children.
I understand that the association have encountered some difficulty in meeting the Minister to discuss this very important question but that while a meeting has not taken place with the Minister for about 18 months, late last evening it was conveyed by an offical of the Department to a member of the association that the Minister would be prepared to meet them on January 9th next. The association have been led to believe that during this month or last month the proposal of the Government to compensate the children concerned would be made known. The association are now fearful that these proposals may not be made known before January 9th. Of course, they have no guarantee that the proposals will be made known then.
I ask the Minister to use the opportunity given him in replying to this short debate to disclose what figure the Government are prepared to pay to these children and to their parents by way of compensation. Settlements have been made to thalidomide victims and their parents in many other countries but there has been no settlement so far as the Irish victims are concerned. So that the Minister would have an idea of the sort of money that the Irish parents must necessarily have in mind, I might refer to the settlements which were made in other countries. In the UK and in the Commonwealth countries the settlement was £50,000 per child and, in addition, the parents of each child received a sum of £5,000. In the US the settlements have been for sums of £100,000 and more. In Canada the figure has been £100,000 in respect of each victim while in Sweden and Denmark the settlements have varied between £35,000 and £50,000 with a built-in inflation clause. In Japan the settlements have ranged between £47,000 and £57,000 depending on the degree of severity of the damage caused to the children by the drug. In Australia the average settlement has been for £51,000 with an additional £5,000 for parents.
The position so far as the Irish victims are concerned is that the German company who manufactured this very dangerous drug endeavoured to lump them in, as it were, under a foundation that was established in Germany, partly by the firm in question and partly by the German Government and which had statutory authority in Germany from the Federal Parliament. By including the Irish victims within the auspices of the German foundation they would become entitled to what was being paid in Germany by the foundation in question but the amounts that have been paid in Germany and which have in some cases been paid on account to some of the children here are miserably small by comparison with the settlements that have been made in Britain and in the various other countries I have referred to.
Under the German scheme the maximum award for the most severe victims of thalidomide was a capital sum of £3,000 and a monthly pension of £72. The most severe damage caused to any individual by this drug was to have been born without any limbs. There is at least one such case in Ireland and, presumably, many more in Germany. The maximum compensation that was awarded to any such child in Germany was merely £3,000 and a pension of £72 a month. The less severe cases have been offered capital sums of only a few hundred pounds. When one talks of the damage being less severe in relation to thalidomide, it may be correct, speaking comparatively, to say it is less severe than some of the very severe ones such as limbless children but even the least severe in Ireland are rather horribly crippled and deformed. If a similar sort of injury were caused to a child or to anyone as a result of a motor accident here, the damages would merit an award of tens of thousands of pounds.
The parents of these children, and the children who are all now aged between 12 and 14 and are conscious of the numerous problems attaching to their condition, have waited this tremendously long period for some sort of compensation. The parents know that in other countries children who were damaged by the drug, with the exception of the German children, have got these large awards that I have mentioned. In fairness to the German Government, I would point out that while the amounts awarded there seem very small there are available freely to those children tremendous social and medical services, whereas here the only entitlement of the children is to a medical card and that some are in receipt of the £25 per month domiciliary allowance. Some of the Irish children have received the German award, which is very niggardly, but some even at this very late stage have not been paid that yet. But what they have got, or will get, from the German foundation is only a small fraction of the compensation to which they are entitled and which they and the country as a whole look to the Government to provide as has been done in the many other countries to which I have referred.
The Minister may announce the amounts that will be offered to the children at the meeting which was fixed yesterday for 9th January but if the amounts have been decided on there is no reason why the Minister should not take the opportunity of this short debate to tell the parents of the children concerned what his proposals are. The parents are distressed and upset at the excessively long delay which seems longer here than in any other country. We must acknowledge their situation: all of them have now lived with these children for 12 to 14 years. That, in itself, causes great problems to all of them but their natural distress and anxiety is increased by the prolonged delay in the announcement of the figures the Irish Government propose.
Deputy Andrews would like to use the remaining time available to us to speak on this matter and I do not propose to continue except to say that presumably the Minister has now decided on the figures he will offer and I would ask him in all charity to end the very excessive waiting period for these children and their parents and tell them now rather than in three or four weeks' time what they will get.
