Aoife Moore: Stolen from their mothers' arms yet the State will pay them nothing
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How much should trauma cost? How much for an identity? A family? A sense of belonging? How much should the State pay for children who were stolen? The Government has decided, in some cases, nothing.
Hundreds, if not thousands of people across Ireland wake up every day with no idea whose arms they were taken from in their first moments on earth, and the Government, keen to remind us they really don't understand what these people have been through, has decided to pay them nothing.
To much fury, it was announced earlier this month that only children who spent more than six months in mother and baby homes will be eligible for the Government's new redress scheme.
A Sinn Féin motion tabled this week by TD Kathleen Funchion pleaded with the Government to re-think the time limit, provide access to the enhanced medical card, new payment rates, and end the unfair exclusion of some survivors and institutions.
Children's Minister Roderic O'Gorman said the Government scheme would be paid to "defined groups in acknowledgement of suffering experienced while resident”.
"I'm very conscious that the separation of a mother and a child is a deeply, deeply traumatic event..." he said.
Perhaps he forgot the other half of the sentence, which was probably: "...but only for one party".
One must assume that trauma only sets in after five months and 30 days around Government buildings, despite a litany of research that tells us otherwise.
More than 30 clinicians working in the area of childhood trauma already wrote to Mr O’Gorman asking for the parameters of the scheme to be changed to take into consideration “the impact of early trauma”.
Many have rightly have pointed out that the length of time they spent in an institution was irrelevant – forcibly removing an infant from its mother should be trauma enough, without having to underline the point by noting that many of these children were boarded out, illegally adopted or sent to an industrial school.
Some were physically or sexually abused while others have reported mental health issues later in life as a result of the circumstances of their birth and will not see a red cent from a government that claims to put survivors at the heart of the process.
Cynics might argue that removing 40% of survivors from the scheme is a cost-cutting measure, not least because a report the Government itself commissioned said forced family separation and psychological trauma were the most frequently identified criteria for redress.
Meanwhile, those who do qualify for redress could be signing their legal rights away for as little as €5,000. Those who receive a financial payment must sign a legal waiver stating they will not take future legal action against the State. Buying the silence of those forced to be silent for decades is not the worst insult Ireland has levelled at these people, but it might be the newest.
Those due the maximum payment of €125,000 after spending more than 10 years in an institution are in the minority and most likely elderly.
The Government says it could be 2023 before these women, already ignored in their youth and now kept waiting in their later years, will receive any payment.
These women will spend the winter of their life waiting for money that will not come close to relieving any burden caused by spending more than a decade in some of the most unChristian houses of God imaginable.
Like every new horror of Catholic Ireland that modern generations have to square away, we forced those involved to share the most intimate details of their trauma.
The State brought elderly women to give evidence and they told us they were strapped to beds and forced into labour, only to catch a glimpse of their baby as it was taken away.
Those stolen children were forced into the public eye, to share their stories on the TV and in the newspapers, so we could understand how irrevocably their life had been damaged and so they could put pressure on the Government.
A much-disputed and downright insulting report was compiled, then leaked, while the Government continued to resist attempts to give survivors access to their personal records, still continues to deny the GDPR implications, and refused to extend the commission of investigation to allow greater accountability.
Common human decency aside, given the groundswell of public support for these people, you'd think a government maligned for not understanding public mood would be keen for an easy win, but this particular Government never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Leaving fury and moving onto embarrassment, the outline of the scheme notes that the minister has written to the religious congregations seeking to "meet with them in order to discuss how they might contribute to the scheme".
Something Social Democrats TD Holly Cairns rightly called: "Cap-in-hand stuff."
The representatives of God on earth who pulled babies from their mother's arms, facilitated forced adoptions, falsified records, gave to go-ahead for children to be used in vaccine trials and medical experiments, and left infants in mass graves across the country, will not be forced by the State to pay for these injustices.
As Ms Cairns said in the Dáil during the week: "Many of the people who committed these heinous crimes are now deceased but not all, and the orders still have assets from the money made off the backs of young mothers, children and babies."
They've merely been asked if they would like to "contribute", like we're having a raffle in the local community centre and not trying to undo decades of trauma that they played the primary role in, while the State turned a blind eye.
It is not the time spent in these institutions alone we must atone for, but the cruelty of the system itself, and the fact we not only let it happen but allowed a hateful and exclusionary society which perpetuated their use to continue for so long and that is the point the Government continues to miss.
Because it's not just my granny, it's yours or your mother's, or your neighbours and aunts and friends who were held in these houses of cruelty with the say-so of the State and there are stories of wet bedsheets and worse, up and down this island.
The State owes these women and children much more than money but an entire lifetime of potential, of happiness and respect that was taken from them.
Irish women have been insulted by successive governments since the foundation of the State, and continue to be with this new attempt to water down what should be rightfully theirs and their stolen children's.
We should count ourselves lucky these people only want respect and not revenge.