Paul is one of around 24,000 survivors of mother and baby homes excluded from the new redress scheme. He spoke to Joe on Liveline about how his time in Sean Ross Abbey has shaped his life. Listen back above.
Applications to the Mother and Baby Institutions Payments Scheme open on the 20th of March 2024, but almost two thirds of the estimated 38,000 survivors are not eligible to apply. One of those shut out of the scheme is Paul O'Sullivan from Cork, who spoke to Joe Duffy on Liveline about piecing together the story of his birth in Sean Ross Abbey and the profound ways in which the events of his early years continue to affect him.
According to the rules of the scheme, babies born in mother and baby homes and taken from their mothers before the age of 6 months are not considered to have suffered harm deserving of redress. Paul O’Sullivan says he would like to know why:
"I’d like someone from the politicians themselves, or someone from the department to come on and explain their reasoning, that someone who was in there 179 days and then was adopted or left, isn’t the same as someone who was in there one day later."
It's difficult to prove beyond doubt how long anyone spent in a particular institution, Paul says; particularly as the records are incomplete. Paul was able to view his own records from Sean Ross Abbey, which have since been passed on to Tusla. He say they came with a caveat:
"There’s a disclaimer in the middle of it that says 'these are the records that Tusla received from the institutions; we cannot verify their accuracy.’ So they can say I was in there 11 days, but they are leaving a loophole to say that they can’t stand over that."
Paul was in his forties before he began to gather scraps of information about his early life. He still has many unanswered questions, he says:
"My record says ‘illegitimate’, but then how could that be if my mother was married? You see, there are so many inconsistencies."
Paul says he plans to apply for the redress payment, athough on paper he doesn’t qualify. He says he will tell the truth, including about having no personal memory of his time at Sean Ross Abbey. The problem as he sees it is that the records are unreliable:
"The things that I have are not worth the paper they're written on, if they can’t stand over the authenticity of them. There’s no-one alive in 1963 in Sean Ross Abbey that can say, ‘I remember him’."
Paul’s early life has had such an impact that he is unable to sit through the movie Philomena, based on the true story of Sean Ross Abbey survivors Philomena Lee and her son Michael Hess:
"When I saw the movie Philomena, and my wife can verify this, I nearly got, like, I collapsed. To this day, I still can’t watch it. Particularly if I was after a glass of wine or whatever, I get very emotional."
Paul says it’s not about the money. It’s about the damage done, he says:
"It’s the hurt. It’s not the fact of, it’s irrelevant if it was a euro. I don’t care. I want an answer. And I want someone to stand in front of me and tell me why they did this and why, are they waiting for us to die, or what?"
Joe also spoke to Dr Sharon Lambert, senior lecturer in applied psychology at UCC. Joe asked her if she can think of a justification for imposing the180-day limit on applications to the scheme? Sharon says it raises the question whether or not there was input from a psychologist in coming to that decision, given that it’s now widely accepted in psychology that trauma in infancy can have a lasting effect, she says:
"A psychologist would say that the first to the thousandth days of a child’s life are the most important. And that includes those first 180 days."
In Sharon’s view, the 180-day cut-off puts people in a bind, in that it makes objectors look like they are focussed on the money, she says:
"What they have, it appears to have done, is that they’ve made a financial decision; which makes it look like this is about money for people who are raising the issue. When actually it isn’t. What they want is that you acknowledge that the period of time that was spent there had an impact."
Miriam, a survivor of the Castlepollard Mother and Baby Home called in to talk about her experience. She attends a support group in Castlepollard which includes mothers and children who spent time in the institution. She knows some elderly women who qualify for payments, but who she believes won’t apply because of the shame and stigma surrounding the issue. Yet others have died or may die before their applications can go through, Miriam says. One woman known to Miriam had been looking forward to the payment, but has since passed away:
"One woman who was living for her ‘few bob’ as she called it, has died. And her family are entitled to nothing."
Another caller, Shane, spoke about his late mother, who died in February this year. She was a survivor of St. Patrick’s institution on the Navan road and her son Brian was adopted to the United States. His son, Shane’s nephew, contacted Brian’s birth mother just before COVID and the subsequent reunion was a happy one for the whole family, Shane says. Shane feels that women like his mother don't deserve to be stigmatised:
"Far from shame, these women should be proud. They should be extremely proud of themselves for what they had to endure."
Shane believes that whether people apply to the redress scheme or not, the nation should cherish the survivors and their memories:
"Whether they decide to go for it or not is entirely on them. But shame shouldn’t be a factor. They are some of the most precious people we have in our country."
If you're personally affected by any of the issues raised here, you can find information on helplines here.
Listen back to the full conversation on Liveline above; and you can go here for Dr Maeve O’Rourke's take on the redress scheme on Today with Claire Byrne.
You can listen back to more items from Liveline here.