‘Boarded out’ children must be included in redress scheme, says survivors’ advocate

Some children who were “boarded out” by the State were forced to eat from a pig’s trough because they had no food, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The special advocate for survivors of institutional abuse, Patricia Carey, recalled meeting children who had been boarded out and said their treatment was “heinous”.

Boarded out refers to those children sent from State institutions to farms and families up to the 1970s.

She estimated that 20,000 children, since the foundation of the State, were boarded out, of whom approximately 10,000 were still alive, and the numbers are growing smaller every year.

She called on the State to include them in redress schemes set up to compensate those subjected to institutional abuse as children.

Some of those who were boarded out went in at the age of four and emerged at 16 without support from their biological families, she told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality on Thursday.

“They talk about being dressed up the day the inspector came, and the minute the inspector left, those clothes were taken from them,” she said.

“I’ve spoken to people who were eating from the pig trough because they didn’t have enough food. So this is the reality of these people’s lives.

“Let us be in no doubt that they were treated appallingly, and the State has not responded to them.”

Carey told the committee that thousands of children were sent to work in conditions akin to “slavery on farms and private houses. This system was overseen by the State through inspections and payments were made to the families with whom the children were placed.”

Many endured terrible conditions and others, she told the committee, were subjected to sexual abuse. These were State-run schemes and the families involved received a payment.

She called for the current Mother and Baby Institutions Payment (redress) Scheme to be extended to those who were boarded out.

She said those who had been boarded out feel “invisible within the wider network of institutional abuse” and the response of Minister for Children Norma Foley on this issue to date “cannot be regarded as an adequate substitute for financial redress”.

She referenced an apology from the Taoiseach Micheál Martin in February this year to those who had been boarded out, acknowledging that some of them experienced “heartbreaking exploitation, neglect and abuse within the families and communities in which they were placed”.

Carey added: “An apology from the Taoiseach is one thing, the response to that apology is another.”

The Government’s Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme only includes those who were in residential institutions and not those who were sent to foster families. Despite the apology by the Taoiseach in February, there has been no move by the Government to include them in the redress scheme.

Carey told the Oireachtas committee that the redress scheme has only reached 23 per cent of those eligible, though it has been open for 2½ years.

She also revealed that the Magdalen Restorative Justice Ex-Gratia Scheme, set up in 2013, has had a “very low uptake”.

She said the embassy networks should be used to reach those people who are eligible for redress, but do not know about it.

She said the redress scheme should be extended also to those who were in mother and baby homes under the age of six months and also those who were subjected to vaccination trials.

[ Minister ‘erred in law’ excluding two institutions from mother and baby homes schemeOpens in new window ]

The redress scheme has a budget of up to €800 million. Just 7,500 of the 34,000 people eligible for redress have applied, and the funds could adequately provide for those excluded from the scheme, she believed.

Carey called for a consistent level of support for survivors of institutional abuse. She said a range of benefits exist, with some survivors eligible for medical cards while others are not. The same goes for access to education, housing and wellbeing support payments.

“The fundamental question I have is this: as the Government has apologised and acknowledged the abuse, neglect and exploitation suffered by survivors, why does that accountability not translate into one consistent and equal level of support and redress for survivors?” she said.

“The harm was not hierarchical; unfortunately, the Government response is.”