Bessborough campaigner hits out at compensation scheme omission

A BESSBOROUGH mother and baby home campaigner has condemned that survivors of Bessborough will not be compensated for the work they carried out during their time at the institution.

It comes as the compensation scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes opened for applications yesterday.

Bessborough is not included on the list of institutions relevant for work-related payment, while Cork County Home, Cork (Midleton) County Home, Cork (Clonakilty) County Home, and Cork (Fermoy) County Home have been included.

Won't be paid

Activist Maureen Considine, a member of the Cork Survivors and Supporters Alliance, said: “From 1922 to 1998, the women who worked in Bessborough — the public patients — won’t be paid for the work they did. Other major institutions like St Patrick’s on the Navan Rd in Dublin are also excluded from the work payment. To us, that’s really big because the public patients did a lot of work. They did cooking and cleaning.

“I know a woman who cleaned the rooms of the private patients, and she did all the laundry for the private patients as well. That wasn’t her choice, she had to do that and now she’s not going to be paid for the work she did.

“I know another woman whose job it was day-in, day-out to clean the dirty nappies. This was back in the time of the cloth nappies in the ’70s. We also know Bessborough had a farm so there would have been girls working on the farm. It wasn’t ordinary domestic work, it was industrial-scale work so we were really surprised when the lists came out.”

The Department of Children said the payment scheme will provide financial payments and health supports to eligible people who spent time in mother and baby institutions.

The 42 institutions covered by the payment scheme have been broken up into two listicle tables. The first lists all institutions relevant for general payment, work-related payment, and health supports and the second lists institutions relevant for general payment and health supports only.

Misery

Catherine Coffey, a Bessborough survivor and member of the Cork Survivors and Supporters Alliance, said that while she broadly welcomes the scheme, she would question “how the birth mothers’ misery can possibly be measured”.

“The legacy of this history is more than a monetary value. It is about the attitudes towards women and girls and the attitudes towards women’s rights in general and we have to learn from this history so that it never repeats itself. We speak of feminism and equality but if we don’t implement the actual meaning of those words, then we have learned nothing,” she said.

“If we want to talk about healing and acknowledging, I believe it starts with the birth mother and it ends with the birth mother. Me and many birth mothers want closure but we want control of the narrative. We were there. Our autonomy was taken.”

Another element of the payment scheme that has been widely criticised is the requirement that the survivor must have been a resident of an institution for at least six months.

An Rabharta Glas councillor Lorna Bogue, who in 2020 resigned from the Green Party citing the Government’s handling of issues around the Mother and Baby Homes Commission, said the imposition of a time limit “doesn’t account for that lifelong harm that was done to those women and children”.

Recompensed

Labour Party local election candidate for Cork City South East Peter Horgan said all survivors of these institutions should be recompensed, “no matter their length of time in such ‘homes’”.

Those who are eligible for the scheme can apply via the Government’s website, by downloading a form, or phoning the Payment Scheme Office helpline.

The Department of Children has been contacted by The Echo for comment.