Confusion over whether survivors of mother and baby homes face hiked rents after redress payouts

Survivors of mother and baby homes are being hurt by a lack of clarity around whether redress payments impact their housing supports, says Councillor Jesslyn Henry, of the Social Democrats.

At December’s monthly meeting of Dublin City Council, Henry raised her concerns in a motion, seconded by her party colleague Councillor Noelle Brown.

Means tests for social-welfare payments often exclude one-off compensation payouts, the motion said. 

“But there is no published guidance in relation to housing supports and one-off payments to survivors of Mother and Baby Homes as part of the redress scheme,” it says.

“This lack of clarity is causing stress and confusion for survivors accessing housing supports through city councils and county councils,” Henry’s motion said.

Council tenants – and people who get the HAP housing subsidy to rent in the private sector – pay a differential rent, a percentage of their income. So an increase in income can lead to an increase in rent.

Henry called on Dublin City Council to write to the Minister for Housing to request a directive be issued to all councils around Ireland, clarifying the matter.

Brown was born in the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork. She never met her birth mother, who died nine years before Brown began efforts to track her down.

Henry was born in St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home on the Navan Road in Dublin.

The confusion around the impact on housing supports is typical of schemes for survivors established by the government, says Brown.

At the meeting, the council’s chief executive, Richard Shakespeare, said Dublin City Council’s position is that such payments “should not be classified as income and should be considered as a payment that is once-off and outside the regular pattern of a person's income”.

His team would prepare a note for the Lord Mayor to send to the Department of Housing, to request it issue a directive clarifying the matter, he said.

Does the department intend to do that? 

A spokesperson for the department said on Thursday said that local authorities may already decide to disregard one-off payments, which are outside of the regular pattern of a person’s annual income.

They pointed to the department’s policy on social housing supports, which says that in general terms.

“While the Mother and Baby Institution Payment Scheme is not specifically mentioned, it would fall under this category,” said the spokesperson.

The department has not responded to a follow-up question, asking if they would explicitly add the redress payments to the list of acceptable one-off payments to ensure there is no possible confusion.

A terrible history

Ireland has a “terrible history of incarceration”, Henry told the council meeting. “Women who did nothing wrong but to be pregnant out of wedlock.”

Survivors have finally been recognised with the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme, she said. 

The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023 was established “for the purpose of the making of payments and the making available without charge of health services” to survivors, the Oireachtas website says. 

And to “provide for the making by such persons of applications for such payments and services”.

But some survivors now face challenges because councils are unsure if they should be charged greater rents because of the payouts, Henry said.

The legislation is clear that such payments are tax-exempt.

But nowhere is it explicit that the redress payments shouldn’t impact housing supports, Henry said.

Brown said that it’s not the only compensation scheme for survivors set up by the government that has been undermined by confusion. 

The enhanced medical card for survivors is another example, she said.

This is a lifelong, non-means tested card entitling holders to free GP services, approved prescriptions, inpatient and outpatient hospital services, home nursing, physiotherapy and counselling, among other services. 

For many survivors, she says, these cards proved “absolutely worthless” because they are not widely known and accepted. 

People tried to use them and ended up in public spaces having to explain what the card was, she says.

“They had to go into all their personal details in public, violating their privacy, says Brown. “Then they would ring the HSE and go, ‘I can't use my card because nobody knows what it is’.”

Often staff in the HSE hadn't a clue what the card was either, she says.

“So, it's following on from that. You’ve put a redress scheme in place, and you haven't thought about the impact on housing supports,” she says.

The redress scheme had a rocky start, says Brown, as it began by excluding 40 percent of survivors – 28,000 people.

This exclusion occurred because the eligibility criteria for the payments requires a child to have spent at least 180 days in a relevant institution, as then-Minister for Children, the Green Party TD Roderic O’Gorman said in January. 

Then, “For survivors, mostly older people who managed to navigate a difficult online process to apply, they were forced to sign a waiver in order to receive payment,” Brown said at the council meeting.

Signing that waiver means that survivors agree not to take any further action against the state related to your experience.

Brown has communicated directly with people who have been impacted by the housing-support confusion, she says.

Already, these payments are paltry, she says. “I mean, €5,000 for the loss of your child through forced adoption or death, and no records of burial a lot of the time.”

Survivors have started to say that they wish they'd never applied for their redress, she says. “Which is appalling.”

Henry’s own mother hasn’t bothered applying, Henry said by phone last week. 

Her mother asked her, “What’s the point?”, she says.

It would take months to get documentation together, she said to Henry.

While it’s sad, Henry says she also completely understands her mother’s decision. “And if my mam's not doing it, how many other people aren’t doing it?”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.