Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 September 2023
814. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the reason he excluded St. Patricks Guild, Rathmines, from the mother and baby home redress scheme and will he reconsider the exclusion. [39634/23]
View answerThe Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme is designed to provide payments and other benefits to people who spent time in one or more of the Mother and Baby or County Home Institutions, that were identified by the Commission of Investigation as having a main function of providing sheltered and supervised ante and post-natal facilities to single mothers and their children. The institutions covered by the Payment Scheme are set out in Schedule 1 to the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act, which was signed into law on 11th July 2023.
St. Patrick’s Guild was an Adoption Society, with sites in Rathmines and elsewhere and, as such, is not an institution which fell within the terms of reference of the Commission of Investigation.
The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023 makes provision for additional institutions to be added to the Scheme if it were to come to light that they fulfilled a similar function with regard to single women and their children as the 14 Mother and Baby Home Institutions and they were institutions in which the State had a regulatory or inspection function.
