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The Daily PollA NATIONAL VOLUNTARY collection for survivors of mother and baby homes has been suggested by independent senator Rónán Mullen.
The government is drawing up a redress scheme for survivors on foot of the publication of the final report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation last week.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that religious organisations should “make a contribution” towards this scheme.
Speaking in the Seanad yesterday, Mullen said the country should consider “whether it would be appropriate to have some kind of national voluntary contribution as part of a redress package to reflect the social and community dimension to this story, along with Church and State contributions”.
“We are all connected with families who are in some way a part of this story,” he added.
We want to know: Should a ‘national voluntary collection’ be set up for survivors of mother and baby homes?
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No – the assets of the church orders need to be seized to pay for this.
Mr. Mullen is a prime example of the urgent need for Seanad Reform. Didn’t only a few hundred people vote him into his 70,000 euro a year job?
No. Church and state were responsible for what happened to those women and children and the subsequent cover up. Let them pay.
@David Lawlor: the state is the taxpayer
@David Lawlor: how is the state (current taxpayers) liable – as far as I am aware the state did not send or force any of these women into those homes.
@lorcmulv: They had a duty of care and inspections seem to have seen nothing despite the high death rates. Besides, what of the unlucky people who actually escaped and were arrested and brought back to slave in those places? They were caught both ways.
My local church in Walkinstown is empty most of the year and has been for a couple of decades now . Tear it down sell the land and give the monies to those who were incarcerated in the mother and baby homes
The church should pay 100% of it
Conservative Catholic wants money for the church, nope
Extreme right wing conservative catholic senator calls on Irish people to make a voluntary contribution to pay for his churches sins.you couldn’t make it up.
@Patrick Fennell: you missed the part where its voluntary, which makes a change from the Catholic Churches previous coercion methods
@Patrick Fennell: Extreme right wing? Hitler, Franco, Pinochet and Ronan Mullen? Ludicrous, no?
Nothing wrong with his suggestion as long as it is voluntary. Remember, if the state pays we all pay.
But they need to stop ‘suggesting’ that the Church and religious orders make a contribution and start demanding it. With menaces if necessary.
@Will: 100% agree, no asking for a contribution. Forfeiture of lands and monies for the church and that’s that.
Ireland is not John Charles McQuaid’s anymore.
@Patrick Fennell: i Wonder how the church got all this land in the first place
@Will: let the church pay, 100%, nobody else. Voluntary MY ARSE
This is maddening beyond words. The church absolutely should pay in full. It was and still is the church’s archaic ethos of instilling fear in every facet of Irish life and money/power grabbing policy that is to blame. Its the wealthiest organisation on earth. It has to pay. The government was complicit but that’s only going to shift blame and payment to the Irish people. Not on.
Absolutely not!
The usual story with the Irish Govt, let’s put the bill on the Irish people, just look at the bank guarantee scheme and the bailout, all of our children will be paying for these through increased taxes USC etc.
Simply put, the Govt of the time colluded with JC McQuaid and his lot to disappear women and children (those girls under 18) to mother and baby homes where the Catholic Church and it’s sodomites could work the mothers to death, kill babies as they pleased, sell children for money and then allow priests, bishops and all-comers to rape and abuse these people as they saw fit.
There is one answer to this question and that is a 75%/25% split of the bill between the Church and State with the Church paying 75%. No excuses, seize their lands and property to pay4 their wrongs
@Martin Holohan: if the state pays, we all pay by default and its no longer voluntary.
@Martin Holohan: senator Mullen is not a member of government though
@thomas patrick: what I mean is, the insurance levy etc. Extra charges because the industry is allegedly losing its ballacks due to sky high claims. Same thing with the bank bailouts, public servants and many other groups get a pay decrease and/or a pay freeze to “put our shoulder to the wheel”. Fair play, I see your point and understand that if the Govt pays we all pay by default but when the Govt comes up with a new tax such as USC/PRD then only the workers pay.
He would do well to listen to Catherine Connolly’s remarks in the Dáil.
A voluntary fund seems to indicate that ordinary people were some how responsible for these atrocities, which is not the case.
While there was a culture of silence amongst the general population, that arose from the strangle-hold the Catholic Church had on the state, its people and their “morals,” its schools and its hospitals. Nothing short of indoctrination.
Any compensation therefore should come from those actually responsible.
An even better suggestion would be to actually ask survivors what they want – and then give it to them without question.
@Mbob: Completely agree. It’s high time that they were heard. It’s ruthless, all these sinister denials and the secrecy and covering up.
This is the same Senator Rónán Mullen who opposed same-sex marriage in 2015. His reasons included ‘same-sex married couples will have the same constitutional right to found a family as heterosexual married couples’. He also tried to scare people into voting No because ‘a Yes vote would hobble the ability of the Dáil and Seanad to insist on a preference for mothers and fathers, because of a certain notion of equality on which same-sex married couples could rely’
His option like his Human Dignity Alliance party don’t deserve much debate. 1950′s Ireland is over. Equality not religious servitude is how we move forward.
The Taoiseach says the Church should “make a contribution”? A contribution??? They should be paying the lion’s share of redress. The victims and families absolutely deserve redress but the government paying it is essentially taxpayers money and voluntary contributions is akso taxpayers money. The Church cannot be allowed to make some token “contribution” to this. I woukd gladly donate (and will if this is set up) but it is the responsibility of state and church – primarily the Church.
Absolutely not, the culprit are the Church, Rome has plenty in the vaults to pay for it.
I think it should as a symbolic gesture that these people were wronged by the entire population including there only family and community
@James crowe: I didn’t wrong them. Take that back.
@James crowe: Not by me. If you have a guilty conscience for something you witnessed and done nothing about, then yes, you should pay. You cannot expect anyone that wasn’t even born to pay (except what will need to be paid through the government, which of course we all pay anyway).
@James crowe: I didn’t wrong them. Neither did my family.
@James crowe: it is a good point. Men who got the women pregnant got away with it. It could be argued that the current member of government were not involved, or current members of the church were not involved at the time. But the fathers of these children who abandoned them and their mothers need to pay.
Society needs to face the uncomfortable truth that men in their family going back only one or 2 generations were compliant. All these babies born had a father who are not identified
@James crowe: Gov/church apologists like yourself should be slapped until you see sense. Communities of Ireland were terrorised by church and state alike I for one will not be taking responsibility for the actions of a handful of animals. If the gov is so adamant to share the blame why not hold the families of the ones that profiteered from the systematic abuse of these women and children responsible. That won’t happen because they’re all political dynasties.
The church should pay for the lot and this time it shouldn’t be capped the way it was with the industrial schools redress.
Yea society needs to pay up seen as we are the real villains here and the state and the church only played a minor role. Ronan Mullen should get in the sea
@john patrick:
I voted YES so if people want to make a contribution IF THEY WANT, if they don’t they will have to pay through tax, but their is probably people who may want to make a contribution
Collect money from the fathers along with other contributors.
The victims of the state/church collaboration which saw them enslaved to religious orders and cruelly abused and their children sold/adopted/abused etc are entitled to be compensated for what occurred as a matter of right and justice not as a matter of charity or benevolence. Senator Mullen ‘it is not appropriate to reflect the social and community dimension to this story’ as everyone suffered at the hands of the state/church both those forced behind convent walls and those on the outside forced to deal with social services controlled by the church because the state abdicated responsibility. There is no get out of jail card for the state/church on this issue, now deal with it.
The Church started it was the state asked them to run these homes and the church also stated it was successive governments that failed to police them. The fact criminal acts happened under religious supervision is not the churches fault as the state did not live up to its obligations is the excuse offered by the church..Bit like the S.S. stating it was the fault of the state in not controlling them. Sweet Jesus you couldn’t make it up.
@Donal Desmond: like you did nozi that coming. Lol. They are of the same ilk anyway.
Excuse me? this question is very disrespectful to the victims. Religious organisations and the State should pay in full !
Germany didn’t ask their citizens to contribute to the war reparations.
@Shem: Where do you think Germany got much of the money for it’s war reparations? From general taxation ie. the citizens. German citizens were even pressed into forced labour after the war.
@Will: im not shem
Lets take into account ALL those that had any input into putting those girls into those homes , including their family or relatives that had something to hide .
No!!
No way, the Catholic Church has vast amounts of money, they have that much they have there own bank. If they refuse to pay just start taking church lands and use it as payment, even demolish churches and build housing on the land
No way.
Take the hospitals off them
I see no problem with people wanting to help but the church should shoulder this as they made a mint out of selling of children and murdering them. Its totally their responsibility to fully recompensate their victims and fianna fail and fianna geal should make large contributions but not of tax payers money. From their own spoils.
@Aaron92utd: Too right, Mullen has some neck to imply that people who work and pay taxes should pay for the crimes of those who never did.
To add insult to injury. These women do not need more so called charity. They need justice force what was done to them by church and state ie us.
@Gerry Ashe: Certainly they do.
A national voluntary collection almost like a flag day where people shake collection tins at you and stick a sticker on you that’s daft and where then does the overall money go does it go to a mother & babies home charity where the boss gets €300k pa. This is Ireland so you can nearly predict the outcome.
Who are the survivors? The mother’s or the children, or both?
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