SOME OF those born in the Protestant-run Bethany mother and baby home in Dublin have given the Government a three-month deadline to include them in a State redress scheme before they initiate legal proceedings.
They are hoping to get an indication from Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn tomorrow as to whether or not they qualify for compensation. They were given fresh hope when the department confirmed that it was “considering their request” following a meeting with them last month.
Based in Rathgar, the mother and baby home to which some women were referred by the courts closed in 1972. It came to public attention last year when 219 unmarked graves of children born there were discovered in Mount Jerome Cemetery.
Derek Leinster, who was born at Bethany in 1941 and who has been campaigning for compensation for the past 14 years, said he would not tolerate any more stalling by the Government as time was running out. The Government previously told him and others they failed to qualify for redress because admission to Bethany was on a voluntary basis and the State had no role with the institution.
Mr Leinster, who is based in Rugby, Warwickshire, rejects this and insists he has found all the evidence needed to prove those born at the Bethany Home were legally entitled to be included on the Residential Institutions Redress Board list. The board was set up in 2002 to compensate those who suffered abuse in residential institutions for children for which the State had responsibility.
During his first meeting with Mr Quinn last month, at which he gave the Minister a deadline of tomorrow to come back with answers, Mr Leinster urged the Minister to review evidence supplied to his predecessors of a cover-up of death and serious illness at Bethany, while insisting that children there were subjected to the same level of neglect and abuse as peers in Catholic-run institutions.
“Because we’re Protestant and because we are a minority, we have been ignored up to now,” he said. He thought that maybe a dozen of those born at Bethany would qualify for compensation, which he said would be a pittance compared to the €1.2 billion paid out to Catholic survivors.
“We need to move on and be treated as equally as Catholics. The children of the nation were abused equally,” he said.
Survivors of five Protestant residential homes for children have been compensated by the State.