Zappone poem convinced Government to act on mother and baby homes, Varadkar says

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said a poem written by the former minister for children Katherine Zappone “convinced” the Government to act on mother and baby homes.

Speaking in the Dáil, Mr Varadkar said Ms Zappone visited Tuam while she was minister, “looked in the tank” and “looked in the graves” and came back to Government and said, “we need to be the Government that tried to do something about this”.

“I remember her [Ms Zappone] that day, in that Cabinet meeting, addressing that Cabinet meeting, almost breaking down in tears as she read out a poem that she wrote herself on that day, and it was that that convinced the Government to act,” Mr Varadkar said.

The Taoiseach was responding to Independent TD Catherine Connolly during Leaders’ Questions on Wednesday, who said the Government was pushing through legislation that was “discriminatory, divisive and utterly based on cost-containment measures”.

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The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill 2022 was due to be debated in the Dáil on Wednesday night.

It provides for redress to all mothers and babies who spent “not less than” six months in institutions, and not to those children who were “boarded out”.

Ms Connolly said the Government had been “forced every step of the way to do something” by people such as Catherine Corless and survivors.

“How dare you take pride in what you have done when you have been forced every step of the way,” she said.

Ms Connolly asked what was the Government’s justification for the six-month rule “if it wasn’t money” and to “stop boasting that this is the best scheme”.

Mr Varadkar said the reason why this Government and the previous Government had set up a redress scheme was because they had listened to Ms Corless, survivors and noted Ms Zappone’s visit to Tuam.

He said sadly similar institutions had existed in other jurisdictions too, “north of the border for example, in other parts of Europe and the world”

“We’re one of the few countries to my knowledge that has actually faced up to this past and at least tried to do something to put things right and put right some of the wrongs of the past,” he said.

The Fine Gael said the cost of the redress scheme for the taxpayer would be €800 million, that could otherwise be spent “meeting the needs of today or trying to build a better future”.

Mr Varadkar said if the Government were only interested in cost containment “we would have just left these matters to the courts and that’s something we didn’t want to do”.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said 24,000 survivors were being left behind by the Government’s scheme due to the six-month rule.

“It is scandalous that this exclusionary discriminatory provision remains in the legislation,” she said.

“The scheme creates a hierarchy of victims by taking the view that some mothers and their children suffered less than others.

“The very idea that a child who spent less than six months in a home suffered no damage or injury and is not entitled to redress is just unacceptable. The Government is saying that these children didn’t spend long enough in a home to suffer trauma from being forcibly separated from their mother. That is wrong.”

“For a child taken from their mother against her will, the trauma was and is the act of separation itself. A trauma that lasts a lifetime. This happened on the watch of the State and there must be redress for this injustice.”

The Dublin Central TD said the proposed scheme was “a botched scheme” and “doesn’t meet the needs of survivors in an equal and fair way”.

She said concerns had been raised by the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, by the UN Special Rapporteur and by the UN Human Rights Committee.

“No matter how long a child spent in these places, no matter what age they were when they left, they suffered greatly and their trauma is real,” Ms McDonald said.