Legal firms accused of taking advantage of mother and baby home survivors

Legal firms have been accused of attempting to sign up “and get money from” very vulnerable survivors of mother and baby, and county homes.

Speaking in the Dáil, Sinn Féin spokeswoman on children Kathleen Funchion said she knew of some solicitors’ firms who had written to survivors “to tell them they may need legal assistance” in the wake of the report on the consultation with survivors which recommended a structured redress scheme.

“Such firms should take a good long look at themselves because, in some cases, they just trying to get people to sign up and to get money from very vulnerable people,” Ms Funchion said. “Those firms know exactly who they are and they should stop.”

Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman said she was making a “really important point”.

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Speaking during the initial Dáil debate on legislation to give effect to an €800 million redress scheme for survivors, he said the department was aware of this activity by some legal firms. There was “no need for legal advice because it is not being done in an adversarial manner”, Mr O’Gorman said, adding that “we and the State can provide them with legal advice”.

They would clarify that in email communication. “We’ll make that point clear that people should not feel pressured to sign up to a solicitor firm,” he said.

The Bill provides for financial support for legal advice for applicants where an affidavit is required, and if they want legal advice at the point of accepting a payment and sign a legal waiver.

Ms Funchion said she disliked the legal waiver. “It goes back to the mindset of ‘we know best’ and there is an issue of trust,” she said.

The legislation will give effect to the redress scheme for some 34,000 women and girls who were in such homes, and for children who spent more than six months in them.

Ms Funchion said, however, that some 58,208 people passed through mother and baby institutions. “That is the total number of people who should be supported by means of any proposed redress scheme.”

The controversial scheme has been criticised for the people it excluded and for the level of payments in set band rates, restricted in some cases to €5,000.

Mr O’Gorman said he had improved the approach to payment rates “by introducing more refined bands”.

The Sinn Féin spokeswoman disagreed with the six-months residency requirement for children. “I cannot understand how someone who was five months in an institution can be totally left out.”

She also described as “horrific” the exclusion of children who were “boarded out” to families.

She cited the case that her party colleague Pa Daly has consistently raised of two Kerry brother who were among those boarded out as children. She said they could only apply if they were in an institution for six months but the scheme does not take into account that “they were used as slaves”.

Ms Funchion also said that “human rights experts spoke at length about systemic racism faced by mixed-race people resident in the institutions” but much of that “does not seem to have been taken on board”.

And she condemned religious organisations and pharmaceutical companies which had apologised for their roles “yet seem to think they have no part to play when it comes to writing a cheque”.

She acknowledged, however, that while she disagreed with Mr O’Gorman on many of the issues he had “at least tried to push on with them, unlike previous ministers who held the post before him”.

The Minister said he believed the Bill “represents a considerable improvement on the general scheme published last March” and stressed that it had been “designed with regard to human rights and equality principles”.