Mother and Baby Home survivors continue to wait for redress payments three years after Ireland's Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation recommended compensation for survivors.
The Department of Children has stated that opening a redress scheme as soon as possible remains a "top priority", according to the Irish Examiner.
The Department added that the redress scheme, which was due to be rolled out by the end of 2023, is set to open in Q1 of 2024.
However, the Examiner reports that survivors are still waiting to receive the green light to apply.
UCC law professor Conor O'Mahony described the delay as "simply unfair" to aging survivors.
In 2021, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes recommended compensation for survivors in its final report and the Irish Government subsequently appointed a financial assessor to negotiate with seven religious institutions about compensation.
However, there is no legal framework compelling the religious orders to negotiate, according to the Examiner.
O'Mahony told the publication that the Government could open the scheme to survivors while negotiations are ongoing.
"There’s no need to wait until any contributions are handed over, just open the scheme and have it up and running," O'Mahony told the Irish Examiner.
The Commission's five-year inquiry, which was led by former judge Yvonne Murphy, found that over 9,000 children died in 18 institutions run by seven different religious orders between 1922 and 1998, double the mortality rate among children in the general population.
The final report also detailed shocking experiments and physical abuse carried out in the different institutions and recommended financial compensation for survivors.
Up to 34,000 people are eligible for compensation, but the scheme has faced criticism because it excludes certain categories of survivors, including babies who spent less than six months in an institution and those who were fostered out to local families.
O'Mahony said the Irish Government is attempting to lay financial responsibility on the seven religious orders as well as maintaining public finances.
The seven religious orders include the Bon Secours sisters, the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of St John of God, and lay organization the Legion of Mary.
Children's Minister Roderic O'Gorman has sought financial contributions from each religious order, but only the Bon Secour nuns, who ran the Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Galway between 1925 and 1961, have agreed to contribute to the redress scheme.
However, the Examiner reports that no deal has been secured with the Bon Secours nuns.
Peter Mulryan, a 79-year-old man who spent four years at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home before being fostered out to a family that abused him, labeled the delay as a "disgrace".
"The whole thing is a disgrace. I have never, ever received a penny from the State for the abuses and neglect I suffered," Mulryan told the Examiner.
"There isn’t a sign of anything. I am disgusted with it to be honest, what they are doing to us, they are playing a game of wait and die so they have less to give a few euros to."
Mulryan added that the delays were "prolonging our agony" and said he is skeptical that redress payments will be made this year.
"They say they are giving us redress this year, I take that with a pinch of salt, how many times did they promise this that, and the other?"
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