Irish Industrial & Reformatory Schools Survivors, and a Hunger-Strike
The language of redress, inequality and the years of dissatisfaction & anger; a time for solidarity; a time for a roadmap to equality.
In the last 2 weeks I’ve been contacted by people I have gotten to know across the West of Ireland. They were outraged by two things. Firstly, that a group of Industrial School survivors were on hunger-strike outside the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament in Dublin), and secondly, outraged by the lack of media news on this small group’s actions.
I was aware that this group had indeed begun this action, and it was also apparent to me, that after many years of simmering anger with the Irish State, the ultimate action of a hunger-strike was probably the only option they considered left open to them.
I suspect that within their strategic thinking was also the backdrop of an apathetic society, fed by a short-span-attention media, claiming or believing that the whole question of Institutional abuse issues is now old news; spent; time to move onto newer pressures that exist on the island of Ireland.
If this analysis is correct, then it represents a failure of many sections of society to listen and understand, but whatever the manufacture of public opinion and perception, this is not the Ireland I met during my recent visit, where the interest on institutional and human rights issues by ordinary Irish people, remains very strong.
In simple terms, the hunger-strikers are seeking justice for their community. They have noted how other schemes have received enhanced medical cards and in one case, a non-contributory pension, and that is what they are primarily seeking for survivors from Industrial and Reformatory Schools.
Despite the fact that Industrial & Reformatory School Survivors, as a whole, were beneficiaries of a Redress Scheme, I decided to examine several principal redress schemes. On examination, it is clear that inequality exists in benefits across all the schemes, particularly when the hunger strikers scheme is compared to subsequent redress schemes. This inequality does however work in several different directions, both internally and between the schemes themselves.
When you look across the nature of redress schemes, they have all delivered their own injustices for their intended recipients. Government, as they have done in the Mother and Baby Home Scheme, presents a public eye-watering narrative that this scheme has an overall value of €800m (having already paid out €63m), but it delivers discrimination through the exclusion of 24,000 individuals from the scheme and for those who were boarded-out or who suffered with racial discrimination, loss of education etc.
Looking at the 3 principal schemes, Industrial & Reformatory Schools, the Magdalen Laundries and the Mother and Baby Homes Scheme, you can see that they all follow a legalistic approach to how you settle, for what is after all, a group-action or class action claim.
What’s interesting about the guidance for Industrial & Reformatory Schools (see the ‘long guide’), is that the then Government used a language that describes in some detail, the qualifying factors of the experience for each of the victims, dividing them as they do into criminal descriptive categories. The document also describes the type of injury that a victim may have experienced; these descriptives are akin to Ireland’s Personal Injuries Guidelines (this type of document has existed for many years in the UK and very likely within Ireland and provides a range of compensatory levels relating to the nature of the personal injury).
Such a range of descriptives are not present within either the Magdalen or Mother and Baby Homes Schemes, but then I suspect that the State would argue that they were presenting an improved version of a scheme by not requiring the applicant to provide evidence of the fact of their incarceration and experiences. But in doing so, they have not deployed a language that describes the extent of that criminal or traumatic experience, on the basis that they are trying to avoid a ‘non-adversarial’ approach, using the principles of ‘to do no harm’ and to ‘act with kindness’. This is a huge subject area which I may explore further.
The same Industrial School Scheme allowed for the award of aggravated damages on top of the award granted, whereas the Magdalen & Mother and Baby Home schemes did not.
But, within the Magdalen and Mother and Baby Home Redress Schemes, those victims were provided with an Enhanced Medical Card. This card provides access for those victims, to a wide range of medical services, without charge, that they may require but could not necessarily afford to access them (those who live outside the Republic of Ireland were to be offered a set sum of €3,000 towards any medical fees – another discrimination?). Whereas the Industrial & Reformatory School Scheme simply provides the facility to award a victim with the costs of past medical treatments, but it allowed for the potential to make an award (not exceeding 10% of the total Redress awarded), to pay for any future medical treatments, if it was considered to be beneficial – they did not receive the benefit of a lifetime enhanced medical card.
The Magdalen Laundry Scheme offered the facility of a non-contributory pension. This was apparently designed to reflect the fact that women had carried out unpaid work in the various laundries across Ireland. Whilst the Irish contributory pension scheme requires that you make social insurance contributions through your working life, it was argued that there were few Magdalen Laundry women presented in evidence, who were actually receiving this pension; hence the decision to award an Irish Non-Contributory Pension to the former Magdalen Laundry women.
However, when you examine the Industrial & Reformatory School & Mother and Baby Home Schemes, there is no facility for a non-contributory pension.
I can see those within government making the argument against the inclusion of a non-contributory pension to survivors beyond the Magdalene Laundry survivors. They might suggest that those within Industrial or Reformatory Schools or Mother and Baby Homes were either two young to work and could on reaching the age of majority begin the process of social contributions. For those women within Mother and Baby Homes, who did carry out unpaid work, and arguably upon their release, a good proportion of any monies earned from a ‘situation’, would have been required to pay for the upkeep of their child, the government would argue that they could have nonetheless have gone on to create an employment history that would include the making of social contributions.
On this issue alone, these two groups suffer from the fact that government or indeed a wider society, cannot see the true effect of the terrible traumas upon these victims and how that played into the rest of their lives. It therefore appears that they may not be able to see that there may have been conditions arising from that trauma, that prevented any such survivors from becoming fully subscribed citizens, going on naturally to receive the full benefits that a society can offer after a lifetime of gainful employment. It’s an important point, but I cannot detect any government having considered the lifetime effect of trauma on lives after institutionalisation? On these factors alone, surely these categories deserve to receive some acknowledgement through the state pension system?
What is interesting to discover within these schemes, is that each held the ‘waiver’ over its applicants (I have been concerned that the legal advices that may have been sought, did not fully examine the nature of the true values and categories of compensation and special damages, against the ‘quick-fix’ nature of these schemes, nor indeed the distinct possibility of raising group or class actions as has been created across many legal jurisdictions on complex issues).
Another stand-out aspect of all of the Schemes is the fact that all those who died before any State Apology or date, were excluded from the schemes and therefore by implication, families managing their estates could not make an application on behalf of those estates. These women and children, and all their historic suffering, in all schemes, became and remain invisible.
In recent days the TD Paul Murphy, asked the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin a key question about the hunger strikers and what the government intended to do about the hunger-strike. He also pressed on the resolution of their two requests, for the benefit of all Industrial and Reformatory School survivors. The Taoiseach responded as follows:
“I met the group last Friday week. I asked them into Government Buildings and we met in the Taoiseach’s offices and had a lengthy discussion. Deputy Murphy knows the history. I established the enquiry into the Industrial schools. That was followed by a comprehensive redress scheme and other measures that were taken. We are willing to engage and I have asked my officials to look at the various requests from the group, but there are repercussions elsewhere and it is not as simple or straightforward as has been presented. We are willing to engage and quite a list of issues was discussed. I have asked my officials to look at those issues and I am also meeting the Minister for Education, whose officials have offered to meet the group on her behalf. I would like this resolved but there has to be flexibility so we can get into a process. I would like them to come off the hunger strike because it can be damaging health-wise. I would like them to come off it in good faith that we would engage on the issues and try to improve what is there already”.
I do not doubt the words nor the intentions of the Taoiseach or his officials.
However, his comments in the Oireachtas reveal what my brief foray into the various schemes demonstrate.
They demonstrate the simple fact that successive governments designed a set of redress schemes which they considered were necessarily distinct from each other, when in fact the same two parties, Church and State, co-designed and managed an institutionally abusive system; a system that delivered a common and substantial set of gross human rights violations.
In my own discussions, the government has expressed its commitment to deliver ‘non-recurrence’ into the new National Centre for Research & Remembrance, but they must surely appreciate that ‘non-recurrence’ is not simply applicable to bricks and mortar, but to the very structure of our institutions and to the very heart of restorative justice?
It is clear from the Taoiseach’s words that ‘quite a list of issues was discussed’, which suggests that the hunger-strikers concerns run beyond those of their principal demands. But he also requires that they finish their hunger-strike in ‘good faith’ on the basis that they ‘would engage on the issues and try to improve what is there already’.
It all seems a little too conditional and whilst I would not want to see people become ill as a result of a hunger-strike, I do think that it is incumbent upon the Irish government to create a publicly available road-map to deliver equality, not just for these protesters, but equivalence for all.
Such a road-map should deliver a commitment to work with the hunger-strikers, not just on their two principal demands but across what appears to be other concerns they hold, delivering solutions.
Once that is published and in order to reassure public confidence and indeed the confidence of this community of protest, a public update on the road-map should be provided, detailing what is possible to achieve and the timetable for that achievement, but also detailing those aspects that cannot be developed, citing full evidence in support and perhaps offering the possibility of other solutions.
On the question of equivalence for all, as indeed legislation and its operation is reviewed, the government through a road-map should inquire and seek opinion from other survivors as to the structure and delivery of the schemes that have been created for them, demonstrating a continual process of listening and solutions.
When he refers to the desire for ‘good faith’, there is surely a need for all parties to demonstrate ‘good faith’, not by the use of conditional language, but by firm words and actions, and a commitment by a government to the creation of a road-map and to ‘non-recurrence’.
But I was caught by one word spoken by the Taoiseach and that was ‘flexibility’. In the process of any joint venture, it is not unrealistic that compromise has to be achieved, for that is how progress and in some cases, justice is achieved.
It is clear that those who are on hunger-strike firmly believe in the solidity of their cause and I can only offer my respect, solidarity and firm wishes that a swift positive end will be delivered by the Irish government.
This scenario was always bound to play out. I have in recent years been involved in my own family’s search for justice and have been witness to the chaotic flow of Redress Schemes. Money and legal voices have been the influential forces behind a political will or pressure in what we have now seen constructed over many years.
It could be argued that it was only political will that delivered these schemes in the first place, but when you think about it, political will does not appear to have learnt any lessons along the way in the construction of these schemes.
The schemes have resulted in widespread dissatisfaction and to a degree, fractures within the wider institutional abuse community, but at its heart, the redress schemes present an illogicality and certainly no connection to the real world of those who seek justice and proper reparation for the wrongs committed against them. Is there any political will to correct that deficit or to hear the voices of protest; time will tell?
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