Tonight’s Prime Time will focus on the ongoing campaign for 18 Bethany Home survivors to be included in the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme.
Bethany Home, which opened in Blackhall Place, Dublin in 1921, before it moved to Orwell Road in in Rathgar, Dublin 6, in 1934, was a Protestant-run ‘mother and child’ home, excluded from the redress scheme for victims of institutionalised abuse. It closed in 1972.
More than 219 children from Bethany Home were buried in unmarked graves, between 1922 to 1949, at Mount Jerome Cemetery in nearby Harold’s Cross.
The National Women’s Council of Ireland writes:
“An alliance of 49 NGOs, trade Unions and academics have called on the Taoiseach to address the unfair position that Bethany Home survivors have to date been excluded from both the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme and the Magdalene Redress Scheme (despite initial indications, that the Bethany Home may be considered for inclusion in the latter scheme). This exclusion leaves them in a state of vulnerability, uncertainty and in many cases poverty.”
“The Alliance has called on the Taoiseach, as a matter of urgency, to ensure that justice is served to the survivors of the Bethany home and that the state affords them the peace and security that they deserve in these, their older years. They call on him to provide them with a process of non-adversarial redress and to provide assistance to the Bethany Survivors in their attempts to access their records.”
Call for justice for the Bethany Home Survivors to be served (National Women’s Council of Ireland)
Previously: Justice For The Survivors Of Bethany House