Tributes paid on death of Bethany Home campaigner Derek Linster

Tributes have been paid on the death of Bethany Home survivor Derek Linster, who campaigned for the inclusion of Protestant institutions in Government inquiries and redress schemes.

Mr Linster, who was 81, died unexpectedly at home in Rugby, England on Saturday, his family said.

“Derek fought a tireless battle for many years to gain justice for the mistreatment of babies born into the Bethany mother and baby home, Dublin - A case that was so very important to him,” his family said in a statement published on social media. “He was a remarkable and incredibly determined man who never surrendered on his fight until the very end.”

Mr Linster, also known as Leinster, campaigned for many years for survivors of Bethany home and similar institutions to receive the same redress granted to survivors of industrial school abuse. He also wrote two books on his experience.

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Last year, Mr Linster issued legal proceedings against the State on the issue. He called for the redress to be fast-tracked due to the age of many survivors.

He was born in 1941. His mother came from a wealthy Protestant farming family, while his father was Catholic.

His mother’s parents refused to countenance him being raised as a Catholic so he was sent with his mother to the Bethany home in Rathgar.

The home sent him to a foster home after seven months but later returned to the home. During this time, he became seriously ill, contracting pertussis, bronchial pneumonia, diphtheria and enteritis.

He was later sent to live with a family who were already living in extreme poverty. He left school at 13, unable to read or write. “I became as good as a slave to farmers who would pay me what they liked when they liked,” he later recalled.

He moved to England in the late 1950s and worked in car manufacturing for British Leyland, where he also served as a trade union official.

Niall Meehan, another long-time campaigner on the issue, said Bethany survivors had lost “their great champion”.

“Derek fought tirelessly for official recognition of Bethany survivors’ existence and for justice over many decades.”