‘We want this to be over’: Thalidomide survivors meet Taoiseach

Thalidomide survivor and campaigner Finola Cassidy was in Italy on an opera tour holiday with her husband at the start of this week, when she received a phone call about an opening in Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s diary to meet on Thursday.

The Irish Thalidomide Association has been involved in a long campaign for compensation from the State, to ensure survivors who are now in their 60s can afford adequate lifelong care.

Ms Cassidy, the spokeswoman for the survivors’ association, booked an early flight home from Italy, landing on Wednesday night. The campaign group, which represents about 40 people, met Mr Martin on Thursday afternoon in Government Buildings.

Thalidomide was a medication sold under several different brand names in Ireland from 1957 to help pregnant women with morning sickness. It later emerged that it caused miscarriages or babies to be born with shortened or no limbs, as well as other health complications. It was withdrawn internationally in 1961, but in the Republic it was not recalled along with the withdrawal, a decision survivors heavily criticise.

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The association is involved in a protracted legal battle with the State for compensation, which Ms Cassidy said has “stagnated” in recent years. Survivors are hopeful political support may break the impasse and “end this whole sorry saga”, she told The Irish Times.

“We were very glad to take this meeting with An Taoiseach, because we got a chance to give him a comprehensive presentation on many of the issues and to give our side of the story,” she said.

The group believes momentum to resolve the ongoing legal battle has picked up pace in recent months. It held a protest outside Leinster House on the 60th anniversary of the international withdrawal of the drug last November.

Earlier this year, members addressed a meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party, which Ms Cassidy said helped move the needle.

“I can’t say it was a deliberate strategy, but it evolved into that. Once we got to say our piece, the support came at us so strongly, and we have benefited from that,” she said.

The meeting with Mr Martin was “the best hearing Thalidomiders have had in many years,” she said. Time, however, is not on the side of many members of the group.

“The overuse of our limbs over the last 10 years in particular seems to have triggered an advancing old age, quicker than normal,” Ms Cassidy said. “Our medical conditions have really come back to haunt us and daily life is a challenge. As a result, time is a big factor in finding the solution to this.

“I barely had a photographer at my own wedding; we find it very hard that we are displaying ourselves and having to walk up and down in front of cameras. We really want this to be over.”

While at an opera during her recent holiday, Ms Cassidy said a particular aria struck her. The song was about bad things happening to a woman who had been a good person all her life, who was left wondering what she had done to deserve her misfortune.

“I can’t listen to that aria without thinking of my mum and the Thalidomide mums ... What did they ever do to deserve this, and the guilt that those mums felt? I can’t listen to it without crying now,” she said.

Ms Cassidy said the group hoped there was now political will at the top level to see the matter resolved.

“Let this be the final push, it’s time,” she said.