Gino Kenny: Calls for fairer redress for mother and baby survivors

Minister, there are many, many things that we can't change in the past, even though we would want to, but we can't. The past is sometimes in the past, and the present is the present. And survivors of mother and baby institutions, it was a deeply, deeply painful past. And mother and baby homes, or institutions, were an institution of the State and the Catholic Church. And they were for fallen women, quote-unquote, to be banished and to be punished for the crimes of having children out of wedlock. And I will get to my own personal experience of that. Minister, there are many flaws with this scheme, particularly around the arbitrary nature of those that spent time in these institutions. I don't really understand why, if somebody had spent less than six months, there is not some sort of compensation or some sort of redress. I think it's slightly an insult. And I'm not blaming you personally, because you weren't to blame for the crimes of the past, but you can readdress the future. And the reason why I say I have personal, my mother gave evidence in the Commission of Investigation, and my mother spent a period of time in one of the institutions. And it was extremely traumatic. Very traumatic for my mother and my sister, which I would meet eventually, over a period of time. And my mother's account is quite harrowing. Her baby daughter was taken away from her, and not to see her daughter for 30-odd years. And I'll always remember to the day I die, of when my mother found out that she was going to meet her daughter again. I'll never forget it. I thought my mother was, well, she was crying, and kind of joyous in one sense, that eventually, you know, the daughter that was taken away from her, she was going to meet again. And it was a very painful time in all our lives. And so in some ways, the juxtaposition of that, but also meeting, you know, a person that my mother thought was gone. And, you know, we met her again. So, Minister, there's a lot to be said, you know, in relation to what has happened, you know, and there's so much pain out there in relation to what has happened. But I think in some ways, in some ways, the scheme can readdress some of the financial compensation in relation to those women that went through this pretty, pretty horrible process. And hopefully, hopefully, the women that went through them institutions will have some sort of, I suppose, in their own minds, they were kind of recognised by the state, the terrible wrongs that were known to them, the terrible wrongs that can't, in some ways, can't be reversed. But at least, you know, the state have said, you know, this was the terrible wrongs and we will try to make them right. Thanks.