The Irish Thalidomide Association has today called for further financial provisions to be made to sufferers after the announcement that survivors in Northern Ireland are to receive £1.1 million in compensation.
Speaking today, Fionola Cassidy, spokeswoman for the association, said: "For those of us who have survived, and it's such a small amount of survivors, we are left with shortened limbs, missing limbs - ears are missing, hearing is a big difficulty.
"There's also internal damage, a small number of people suffer from some brain damage, and the pain management, now in our late 40s, has become a huge issue for Thalidomide survivors because it is the overuse and misuse of these limbs that has now caused a whole crop of unexpected and unprecedented deteriorations in our bodies," Ms Cassidy said.
"It's like old age has hit us 20 years too early. . . . It's the tiredness that comes with the pain from the effort, and that's really taken a toll on our members," she told Morning Ireland.
Ms Cassidy said a "derisory, take it or leave it" lump sum offer was made to the parents of Thalidomide survivors by the-then government in 1975. "At present, some of our survivors are surviving literally on €16 a day, and the maximum is €32 a day . . . and it's very hard for a survivor to accumulate enough to deal with their lives, to purchase, for example, a wheelchair . . . or make life choices."
She said the arrangement made back in 1975 was small because it was not envisaged Thalidomide sufferers would have survived to now, adding the association was assisting 32 acknowledged survivors, with other unacknowledged victims.
The association delivered a letter to the Taoiseach some weeks ago calling for an apology over the sale of Thalidomide and for a financial package for survivors. The organisation is also seeking full disclosure of departmental documents relating to the failure of the Government to immediately ban the drug after being warned of the dangers.
Ms Cassidy said the news from the North was "in stark contrast" to the reaction from Brian Cowen, "who has just acknowledged our request for a meeting".
She said the original settlement made to UK victims "far exceeded" that made to their Irish counterparts. "It was actually five or six times what we would have received as 12-year-old children . . . [and] during the period of the last 35 years, the British thalidomiders have been topped up continually."
The North's 18 surviving thalidomide sufferers are to receive £1.1 million in compensation, the North’s Health Minister, Michael McGimpsey, announced.
The news follows an announcement that compensation would be made available for thalidomide survivors in England.
The Health Minister expressed sincere apologies for the “injury and suffering endured” by those affected by the drug between 1958 and 1961, which was taken by expectant mothers to offset symptoms of early pregnancy.