Sir, – I note Jennifer Bray’s report of mother and baby institution payments to more than 450 survivors (“Hundreds of mother and baby home survivors receive first redress payments,” August 7th). I am not one of them.
Born in 1947 in the Bethany Home, I was there for fewer than 180 days (the payments scheme compensation cut-off).
I was sent by Bethany Home to a “nurse mother” in Tipperary where I was so ill-nourished I suffered from rickets of the head – a condition known as “skull-cap”, resulting in skin on the head folding over the ears.
I was taken under the control of the Irish Church Missions (ICM, a Church of Ireland Missionary Society) and spent some time in a Smyley’s home.
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I was then sent to an ICM-connected family in Northern Ireland, where I was called “Paddy from the home”.
The name stuck, though Patrick is not my birth name. I was regularly beaten.
I left that “home” and lived in a treehouse as a teenager, before finally escaping to England aged 17.
I returned to Ireland and was founder and artistic director of the Tubular Gallery, Cork, and in 1978 was the founder and director of the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork.
After I wrote to him, Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman told me that I was part of a “broader... Government action plan” and should not “feel excluded”. Some plan.
From the beginning, I was excluded and abandoned by the State. I am excluded now, trying to survive on a State pension with increasing health problems.
Words are cheap and so is the Minister’s payments scheme. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK ANDERSON McQUOID,
Drumshambo,
Co Leitrim.
