UPDATES & NEWS

The Irish Times reported on Monday that Mary Harney’s action against the Minister for Children Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, as the Minister to whom the commission reported , had been granted leave to proceed.

She wants a finding to be corrected which says that although “perhaps the majority” of boarded out children were beaten, it was “impossible” to tell “how violently” they were beaten.

Ms Harney says, if she had been given the opportunity, she would have referred the commission to her own statement and affidavit, which described the beatings she received.

She would also have referred the record of her account to the confidential committee of the commission which provided a forum to former residents to provide either written or oral accounts of their experience.

On Tuesday the Irish Examiner reported that the Reynolds Review of a sample of illegal birth registrations in Ireland “found there could be potentially up to 20,000 suspicious cases.”

The Irish Examiner previously reported that the department was told about illegal birth registrations by the AAI as far back as in 2011, and again in 2013, before the St Patrick’s Guild scandal.

In a piece in the Examiner on Saturday Conall Ó Fáthartha provided some context on the Reynolds Review which much of the other reporting had omitted.

Crucially, the review had no remit to examine any other forms of illegal adoption including cases of falsified or questionable consents, where the mother consenting was a minor; adoptions granted in the absence of birth certificates of any kind; and in the case of children whose parents were married and instances of correct birth registrations which resulted in illegal adoptions.

Indeed, the report itself notes that wider concerns like, the trafficking of Irish children; forced or illegal adoptions; the absence of informed consent; or potentially profiteering from the alleged sale of infants were outside the scope of its terms of reference but are matters “which the State will wish to address”.

Documents seen by the newspapers led to reporting in several outlets that the State plans to fight any legal actions taken by survivors of the Mother and Baby Homes.

Despite the damning findings, correspondence from the State Claims Agency (SCA) indicates it plans to fight the cases by arguing they fall outside the statute of limitations.

If successful, the approach adopted by the SCA would significantly damage the prospects of survivors who opt to seek damages by way of the courts rather than through an expected redress scheme.