I thank Senator Boyhan for his amendment and detailed contribution. I also thank the other Senators for their contributions. This Bill already provides for a review of the operation of the scheme, with an overall review under section 49 and an annual review under section 12. I am not in a position to accept these two amendments; however, I will bring forward my own amendments, related to matters a number of Senators have already spoken about. They take account of some of the issues raised on Committee Stage and I h…

I thank the Acting Chair. I signalled on Committee Stage that my officials were examining a complex issue in consultation with the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel and the Office of the Attorney General, with regard to the county home institutions included in this scheme, and that I intended to bring amendments to the Bill on Report Stage to address this issue. This is an issue that came to the attention of my Department recently, hence the reason for the amendments being brought forward at this stage. The amend…

That is correct.

I thank the Senators for their contributions. I will try to address the key issues. Turning to the contribution made by Senator Ruane, I take the point regarding new information and the desire for information of this kind to be accurate. I fully accept what she is saying in this regard. Since the information has come to light about the complexity of the arrangements, especially at many of the county homes, and the evolution many of the county homes experienced in terms of the functions they undertook, officials in …

I take on board the Senator's point about "concluding year". In terms of the material supporting the outline of the scheme, we will bear that in mind. Regarding Senator Boyhan's comments, this scheme has at no point defined itself as being directed towards unmarried women. We were always clear about that. At no point has that been-----

It is fair to say that the vast majority were, but not everyone did. That was the point Senator Boyhan made. The scheme recognises his point and consciously never defines the mothers as relevant persons based on their marital status. This is something we did deliberately.

It was never a question of marital status, as we recognise that there were some married women who spent time in these institutions. Senator Ruane is aware that I am introducing an amendment on the waiver, which will remove some of the ambiguity that she and others raised about the waiver's application. I hope she welcomes that amendment. Regarding the nature of these institutions, I will try to explain the matter as I saw it.

The mechanism to prove residence continues to be the records of the county home. If a woman was admitted to the county home, she spent a period of time there and, when she went into labour, she moved to its maternity wing or separate maternity building, her residence in the county home is still based on the record of being in the county home. We are trying to distinguish where a woman came to the hospital and used it solely on the basis of its maternity services. I have to recognise that some of those women could h…

In that circumstance, Senator Seery Kearney's point about the use of the affidavit would be valuable in terms of providing additional information where an applicant felt that the cold records did not provide the full context. There would be the opportunity to provide an affidavit to give that additional context to the chief deciding officer in making a determination of eligibility under the scheme.

Regarding the Senator's initial point about timelines, we know from the history that this institutional relationship was often complex. There will be times when there will have to be some back and forth between an applicant and a chief deciding officer. We have designed the scheme to make it as simple as possible. In the significant majority of cases the scheme will deliver that simplicity and do so as quickly as possible. However, I cannot say that for every circumstance. That is why we did not just rely on the re…

We are trying to separate out the women who gave birth in maternity facilities and were there solely for the purpose of the use of those maternity facilities. There were other women who gave birth in maternity facilities who were there because they had been admitted into a county home. We are saying that women in the latter category are entitled to be eligible under the scheme. The scheme is designed for them, women who used a facility for giving birth that happened to be on the same site as a mother and baby home …

I thank the Senator. I will make one small point. She mentioned a number of times that you cannot talk about X or Y.

Yes. For the record, there is no gagging order attached to this waiver. However, I take the Senator's point. County homes were added to the commission's remit even though the vast majority closed much earlier than mother and baby homes. In many ways they were seen as a successor to county homes. The reason county homes were in the original investigation, and payments sought is because of the particularly bad conditions that existed in those institutions. This legislation seeks to recognise that. This legislation is…

We could probably go back and forth, so we are probably best off to stop there.

I think Senator Seery Kearney has given a fair estimation of what this scheme does. The Government has never claimed that this scheme provides an answer to every single instance of the mistreatment of pregnant women in our country. It is designed around mother and baby and county home institutions. On Senator Ruane's point, I do not agree that because a county home was on a site, and somebody obtained maternity services in a maternity unit or maternity hospital on that site, that necessarily brings them together. F…

If a woman went to the Mayo county home, she will be included in this scheme. If a woman gave birth in a hospital located on the same site at any time subsequent to that, and I do not know the geography there, this scheme recognises that in many of these places, a separate maternity service was created, set up, and often availed of by the general public. It is recognising that is not the experience for which this particular scheme was designed. It was designed for those who, as Senator Seery Kearney described, were…

I am not sure if I have anything more constructive to say at this point.

I do not accept that there is a query over the years that are being used in the concluding year. We have undertaken significant work in terms of ascertaining what that is. However, recognising that this is an important question, we have also built into it, as one of the amendments that is part of this suite of amendments, a provision whereby it will be done by secondary legislation. Therefore, it does not require primary legislation and the concluding year can be amended by statutory instrument. We have made this c…

It is in terms of its use as a county home.

The amendments in this grouping are all technical amendments to the Bill. Amendment No. 3 provides for a definition of the office of the chief deciding officer in section 2 of the Bill. Amendment No. 9 allows for the Short Title “Office of the Chief Deciding Officer” to be used throughout the Bill rather than the longer title for this office set out in section 7. Amendment No. 40 corrects an error in section 48 so that the staff are appropriately referred to as being "staff of the office of the chief deciding offic…