I give a very warm welcome to all the survivors in the Public Gallery. We are here today because of their tireless efforts to get justice. I welcome the State apology today for survivors of industrial and reformatory schools as well as the clarification on criminal records. I do, however, want to talk about what it took to get here. Survivors of these nightmarish institutions, Mary Donovan, Mary Dunlevy Greene, Maurice Patton O'Connell and Miriam Moriarty Owens, went on hunger strike for 51 days, sleeping on the street outside Leinster House, in the bitter cold and rain, in the winter, just to be listened to, to be taken seriously, to be heard. These are people who have already been repeatedly failed by the State, who were placed in these terrible institutions when they were just children, only to be beaten, starved and sexually abused, treated like prisoners and slaves, denied a childhood, denied compassion, denied care, denied everything a child needs. They were tortured for years by religious orders and a complicit State. The State knew this was happening and did not stop it and did not help - quite the opposite. It continued to send children to these awful places. These children had suffered trauma and needed love and support and were denied it. Instead, all they received was brutality and terror. Every waking minute was marked by fear, anxiety and horror. Lives were destroyed. We are still in this Chamber failing them today, decades later, forcing them to beg for supports that should be easy to access, forcing them to jump through hoops just to get the basics, making them feel like they have no other choice but to go on hunger strike. These are survivors of depraved abuse, forced to endure further trauma and pain, just to get what they should already be entitled to. Today's apology marks the fifth time the State has apologised for what children and women endured in institutions run by religious orders. Those apologies now stretch back nearly 30 years. They started in 1999, when Bertie Ahern apologised to children who had been abused in residential institutions. At the time Mr. Ahern lamented the "piecemeal approach" the State had taken to protecting children and commended the "bravery of individual victims determined to tell their stories and seek justice". Back then, the current Taoiseach was education Minister and chair of a Cabinet subcommittee tasked with designing supports for victims. Since then, there have been apologies by a further three taoisigh: Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny and, in 2021, Micheál Martin himself. Here we are again today, still forcing victims to go public, to advocate and to fight the State for recognition and services, still taking a legalistic approach to redress, in which the overriding priority is limiting access and eligibility, once again trying to protect the State's finances rather than trying to protect victims. The redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes is the perfect example of this. It limits support and services to as narrow a group as possible for entirely arbitrary reasons that have no scientific or logical basis, causing further pain and trauma to survivors, who have already suffered so much, in the process. The State did not do this in the dim or distant past. It was a decision by the previous Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party Government. It excluded children who had spent less than six months in one of these institutions and children who had been boarded out, even if those children had been forcibly separated from their mothers, illegally adopted or treated like slave labour and abused in the places they were boarded out to. They got nothing. I hope the brave people who went on hunger strike are not failed by this Government too. I know they feel very angry and let down that supports they were promised have not materialised. To have survivors consulted about the apology 30 minutes beforehand and to have the dates of their coming and going from the institutions wrong today is insulting. It is disrespectful and the very least they deserve today is respect. I hope this does not continue beyond today.

Sentiment score: -0.12