Diarmaid Ferriter: State drags its heels over Thalidomide apology

Fifty years ago in the Dáil, minister for health Erskine Childers told Fine Gael TD Brigid Hogan-O’Higgins that “children suffering from Thalidomide had been generously treated and there was no hardship”.

One of those children was Jacqui Browne. She is now 60 and made the damning assertion this week that “we are left with the impression that the State is only waiting for us to die”. It is a deserved admonishment. For decades the State has egregiously failed to apologise to those affected by Thalidomide. They now amount to a very small community of 40 survivors, carrying a big weight of historic betrayal, and their mothers endured (and some, very elderly, still endure) feelings of great guilt.

As a drug to treat morning sickness, Thalidomide was withdrawn from world markets in November 1961 due to its link to children born with a range of disabilities, but it was not removed from the Irish market until 1962 and, even then, there was no proper, urgent recall of it from places where supplies remained in circulation.

We were born without limbs, with limbs foreshortened, with impairments of hearing and vision, as well as injury to internal organs

As was noted in this newspaper in June 1962 “there must be many medicine chests in which half-used bottles are waiting to do their damage”. It was pointed out on the 50th anniversary of the drug’s withdrawal that in Ireland an estimated 51,000 packets were sold or given away as free samples to “grateful mothers”, recipients of what was frequently hailed as a “wonder drug”.

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The Irish Thalidomide Association (ITA) suggests “the non-recall in a timely manner could be responsible for 40-50 per cent of total injuries here… We were born without limbs, with limbs foreshortened, with impairments of hearing and vision, as well as injury to internal organs. This caused pain and suffering, not only to ourselves, but also to our parents, siblings and to our own children and partners.”

As minister for health from 1973-1977, Brendan Corish authorised the payment of a small lump sum to parents along with a monthly disability payment, but these modest amounts did not take into account how long the children might live. And there was still no apology.

As a 23-year-old reporter for RTÉ, Olivia O’Leary worked on the story in the early 1970s and recalled, “there was an atmosphere in Ireland at the time about any handicap to accept it as the will of God… back then, the notion that you would stand up for your rights was embarrassing”.

O’Leary asked Erskine Childers why no public warnings were issued in the early 1960s when the effects of the drug were discovered. He replied that a decision had been taken not to issue such warnings “because it could have frightened pregnant women into miscarriages”, a disingenuous way of saying the main concern was that women affected might seek abortions abroad.

One of the victims’ champions was Labour TD and future minister for health, Dr John O’Connell, whose agitation helped secure the 1970s compensation, but there was no legal process to establish the State’s responsibility towards them.

The State will be paying considerable sums to children who may be maintained in an institution, free of charge, for the rest of their lives, one memo said

State files from that decade reveal the scale of the State’s determination to close discussion of the issues raised and its abrogation of its responsibilities. A memorandum for the Cabinet in 1974 recorded “the attorney general made it clear that the government was under no legal obligation or moral obligation arising from neglect on its own part”.

It also suggested topping up payments made by the drug’s manufacturer might dispose of the problem, but that if this was done “the State will be paying considerable sums to children who may be maintained in an institution, free of charge, for the rest of their lives”. When the government decision was made to augment the payments in 1974, each child was to be given a lump sum of £6,000-£20,000 and a small monthly payment of £50-£150, costing “about £24,000 annually, diminishing eventually as the beneficiaries died”. The average lump sum payment in the UK at that stage was £55,000.

The British government also dragged its heals in relation to accountability, but finally, in 2010, its minister of state for health, Mike O’Brien, issued an apology. While that was accompanied by a further compensation package (as was also the case in Ireland that year, though it was rejected), Guy Tweedy, one of the leading campaigners for Thalidomide victims in the UK noted “the apology is just as important as the financial statement”. One of the reasons these financial issues dragged on for decades was also highlighted by Mr Tweedy: “They thought we would all be dead by 2007.”

Ten years ago, Finola Cassidy, spokeswoman for the ITA, decried the necessity for such an exhausting battle: “I just hate that we have had to dig so deep to get what is only right and fair.” That they are still digging today is a sorrowful indictment of the tawdriness of successive governments in relation to a proper apology.