{"id":16448,"date":"2026-03-06T11:44:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/?p=16448"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:44:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:44:31","slug":"minister-needs-to-stop-stalling-and-act-on-high-court-ruling-to-expand-access-to-redress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/ga\/minister-needs-to-stop-stalling-and-act-on-high-court-ruling-to-expand-access-to-redress\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister needs to stop stalling and act on High Court ruling to expand access to redress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns has criticised the Minister for Children\u2019s response to the recent High Court ruling in relation to two institutions wrongly excluded from the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Cairns said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme has been needlessly discriminatory since its inception, with 24,000 people excluded from seeking recompense \u2013 including the survivors of Temple Hill and St Joseph\u2019s infant homes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe exclusion of 40 per cent of survivors from redress was a cynical and despicable attempt to limit the financial cost of the scheme.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSurvivors should not have to bring the Minister to the High Court to seek access to redress. However, it was incredibly welcome to see Judge Alexander Owens\u2019 recent ruling that the Minister erred in excluding these two institutions from the scheme.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwo weeks after this ruling, I received a most unsatisfactory response from Minister Norma Foley to a parliamentary question I submitted in relation to the matter. While she said she is \u2018carefully considering\u2019 the implications of the ruling, she added that \u2018the judgement does not direct the inclusion of any institution in the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere should be no equivocation from the Minister on this; no more attempts by the government to penny-pinch at the expense of providing survivors with some measure of justice for what they underwent as children.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFollowing the court ruling, there is nothing further to consider. The Minister must add Temple Hill and St Joseph\u2019s to the payment scheme without delay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>March 6, 2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns has criticised the Minister for Children\u2019s response to the recent High Court ruling in relation to two institutions wrongly excluded from the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme. Deputy Cairns said: \u201cThe Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme has been needlessly discriminatory since its inception, with 24,000 people excluded from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[540,400,556,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-children","category-holly-cairns","category-mother-and-baby-homes","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Minister needs to stop stalling and act on High Court ruling to expand access to redress - Social Democrats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/minister-needs-to-stop-stalling-and-act-on-high-court-ruling-to-expand-access-to-redress\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"ga_IE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Minister needs to stop stalling and act on High Court ruling to expand access to redress - Social Democrats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns has criticised the Minister for Children\u2019s response to the recent High Court ruling in relation to two institutions wrongly excluded from the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme. 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