There is a group of people in this country who believe that they are being discriminated against purely on the basis of their religion. Had they been born Catholic, they argue, they would now be better treated, writes Mary Raftery.
These are the former residents of a number of Church of Ireland children's homes which remain excluded from the remit of the Residential Institutions Redress Board. The individuals concerned had great hopes that their situation would have been rectified last week, when the Government finally announced its additions to the list of institutions where those who suffered childhood abuse may now seek compensation.
We have been waiting a long time for these additions. The list has apparently been up and back to Cabinet on several occasions. Initially there was talk of a further 50 institutions qualifying for redress, then it went down to 30. The final total added only 13.
Some Church of Ireland homes have always been on the Redress list. However, two, in particular, remain excluded, despite intensive lobbying from former residents. One of these is the Bethany Home in Rathgar. It was principally a mother and baby home, but maintained children until at least the age of three. Derek Linster spent some years at Bethany as a young child. He has obtained his medical records, which show that he was transferred at the age of three from Bethany to a fever hospital, suffering from a range of illnesses which he argues could have been caused by neglect.
Derek wants to have his case heard by the Redress Board. The State has denied him this opportunity, and he is adamant that he is being rejected on the basis of his religion. He does not accept the Government's argument that it had no regulatory authority over his institution and thus no responsibility for it. His view is that regardless of his religion, the State had a duty of care to him, which it ignored.
The general category of mother and baby home has up till now been excluded under the Redress scheme. However, the list of 13 additional institutions includes for the first time a Catholic mother and baby home, St Patrick's, on Dublin's Navan Road, which was one of the largest in the State. Consequently, the exclusion of similar Protestant institutions does indeed begin to appear worryingly sectarian.
A further Church of Ireland institution excluded is the former Smyly's Boys' Home on Grand Canal Street in Dublin, which moved to Monkstown in the 1960s. A number of ex-residents have alleged that they were severely abused there as children. It too remains excluded, and once again this group feels that it has been sidelined because of its religion.
It is difficult to find any State records relating to the Protestant children's homes. Since the closure of the last Church of Ireland industrial school in 1917, Protestant children in need of care were essentially dealt with by private institutions, with the State maintaining a hands-off attitude.
The fact that the Government uses its past neglect of this section of the community to argue that it now has no responsibility to even hear their case for redress is shameful and unjust.
The number of children in this category was always small. However, the abuse some of them suffered was no less real or damaging than that of their Catholic counterparts.
But it is not only in this area that the Government should think again. Its meanness in the redress area also extends to another group, equally small but just as important. These are the children sent from industrial schools directly into Magdalen laundries.
We have it on the best authority possible that there were at least 70 children in this category in 1970. This is clearly identified by that era's official inquiry into industrial schools, chaired by Justice Eileen Kennedy. Her report criticised the treatment of these children as "a haphazard system, its legal validity is doubtful and the girls admitted in this irregular way and not being aware of their rights, may remain for long periods and become, in the process, unfit for re-emergence into society. In the past, many girls have been taken into these convents and remained there all of their lives".
In other words, the authorities of the time believed that the lives of these "many girls" were, in effect, completely destroyed.
However, today not a single Magdalen laundry is included in the Redress scheme. Consequently, the Redress Board is precluded from considering such unlawful detention in a Magdalen institution as grounds for compensation.
In last month's very brief debate on the Redress scheme at the Dáil's Education and Science Committee, scant reference was made to these issues. The penny-pinching attitude of the Government in turning its back on these albeit small groups of individuals does neither it nor us as a society any credit. It is simply not good enough to say, as it does, that because the State ignored these groups in the past, that it is justified in continuing to do so today.