Government Issues Over €66 Million in Payments for Mother and Baby Home Survivors

The former Magdalene laundry on Seán McDermott Street in Dublin's north inner city, which closed on October 25, 1996.

Over €66 million in payments have been issued under the Government’s mother and baby home redress scheme. An awareness campaign is expected to be launched to encourage people to apply for the scheme, with a particular focus on people living in Great Britain.

The Government set up the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme with the expectation of issuing payments to around 34,000 people and health supports to 19,000 people who were in mother and baby homes, at a cost of €800 million.

Its third implementation report about the action plan for issues related to mother and baby homes, published on Tuesday, said that over 6,600 applications have been received as of June 15, 2025.

Today's News in 90 Seconds - June 24th: By this date, over 4,400 payments had been processed to the value of over €66 million. Over 16,000 requests for information have also been completed under the Birth Information and Tracing Act.

“With an estimated 34,000 people eligible for this Scheme, an estimated 40% of whom live outside of Ireland, the department is conscious of the need to raise awareness of the scheme through all means possible and phase 2 of a public awareness campaign ran from October to December 2024 with a particular focus on Great Britain,” the report said.

“Further phases of the awareness campaign will be undertaken in the future.”

The government had sought for religious bodies to contribute around €270 million to the cost of the Government-established Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme. Only two of eight religious bodies linked to mother and baby homes in Ireland have offered to contribute, a report found in April.

The Sisters of Bon Secours offered €12.97 million, while the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul proposed contributing a building to the scheme.

A commission of investigation was set up in 2015 to examine homes run by the state and religious organisations where tens of thousands of unmarried Irish women were sent to have their babies. The commission found that almost 170,000 women and children passed through the institutions from 1922 until the last one closed in 1998.

The investigation exposed the often harsh conditions and unforgiving regimes many women and children experienced in the institutions.

It comes as Minister Norma Foley is to bring a plan to Cabinet for a permanent residential abuse commemorative centre on Sean MacDermott Street in Dublin to honour all victims of religious abuse.

The new interpretive centre will be on the site of an old Magdalene laundry, which once accommodated some “fallen women” from the streets of neighbouring Monto, once the largest red light district in Europe.

But while the brothels of Monto were cleared a century ago this year, the Magdalene laundries continued in operation until the 1990s, incarcerating unmarried mothers.

They were held often for decades, carrying out unpaid work for the Catholic Church and its religious orders.

A planning application has already gone in for a campus in which the public can learn about the harsh lives of women forced into manual work for the ‘sin of having a child out of wedlock’.

It was initiated by former Equality minister, Roderic O’Gorman, who said a national centre for records and memorialisation in Seán MacDermott Street was really important for the validation of victims.

Survivor groups were notified overnight of this afternoon’s intended announcement of the conversion of the laundry. There will be a museum of the Magdalene experience, and an archive run by the National Archives.

It is also believed there will ultimately be some social housing there as well, with an allocation for elderly people as part of the overall concept.

The announcement comes days after work has started on the Tuam mother and baby home site that could contain the remains of 800 infants buried in a septic sewer.

Director Daniel McSweeney and an advisory board have started work, supported by campaigner Catherine Corless.

It was Ms Corless who first uncovered the scale of unregistered burials in Tuam and who brought it to national and international attention.

The legislation allows for identification attempts when human remains are found, with the Government pledging that the best technology that currently exists will be used in the effort to get DNA from those remains that are excavated.

But identification efforts, with family members giving blood samples, will depend on what material is found, and the condition it's in.

Sensitive reburial is on the agenda, and there will be ongoing discussion with families of former residents, in terms of how respectful reburial can be undertaken at the end of the process.

According to the source: The Irish Independent.