Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I welcome Professor Marie Breen Smyth, interim chair of the victims and survivors consultative forum. It is good to have you in front of the Committee, Marie. I invite you to make your opening remarks.

Professor Marie Breen Smyth (Victims and Survivors Consultation Forum): Thank you very much to the Committee for the invitation to come along. When I got that invitation, I anticipated that the expectation would be that I would be able to speak on behalf of the forum. I cannot speak on behalf of the forum, because the members of the forum speak on behalf of themselves. There is also quite a wide division of opinion amongst forum members. Indeed, forum members comprise only a small proportion of the 6,000 people in total whom, we reckon, are affected by the business of the Committee in this instance and of the inquiry. That is a health warning before I launch into my remarks.

You received a report from me on a survey that I conducted in preparation for today. I propose to walk you through the survey results in order to give you a sense of the forum's views on the Bill. As I have said, there is a wide variety of opinions in the forum. The survey results are the best evidence base that I can establish for that variety of opinions. We sent out a questionnaire, the contents of which were derived from the frequently asked questions that TEO staff had come across, questions that came up in the forum, and issues and opinions that were expressed therein and elsewhere. I compiled all that into a questionnaire of 20 questions. You might wish to note that there were lots of complaints that that was too many. There were 90 questions in the other survey. There is a resistance to that method of communication. Some people, particularly in the older cohort, do not have access to the internet. They are more familiar and comfortable with telephone communication. Trying to improve access to the opinions is an issue for all of us.

The responses were anonymised. We sent the questionnaire to anyone who was registered with an email address. That is wider than the forum. The forum has only 110 members, and we sent it out to 236 people. It closed on 1 September, and we got 54 responses. Being the nerdy person that I am, I have calculated the margin of error, and it is 13·3% at a 95% level of confidence. That means that any of the scores that you see are within 13·3% either plus or minus. You can be fairly certain that that is an accurate reflection, although that is only of the 236 people that we surveyed and not of the 6,000 total, so i provides only a window into the issue.

You can read the questions at your leisure. I will not labour them, because I would like to go to the results. This slide shows the questions that were in the questionnaire. I can make available a longer survey report, if you have the appetite to read it. I put that to the Chair and the Deputy Chair, and you can come back to me on it.

I have ordered the key findings by the degree of coalescence around a particular view. In response to my survey, 83% — bear in mind that there is a margin of error and that, therefore, that figure could be anywhere between 96% and 70% — of forum members agree that the Bill needs to be more specific about the degree of relationship that qualifies a person to claim redress. That is the question on which there was the highest level of agreement.

Sixty-eight per cent — you can apply the margin of error — of respondents agree that the Bill should include all forced separation outside of the institutions — that is, the Magdalene laundries, mother-and-baby homes and workhouses. There is 67% agreement that provision must be made for the payment of the legal expenses of the victims and survivors participating in the forum, not necessarily the expenses of other people.

There is also 67% agreement that non-financial means of redress should be added to the Bill. Those are currently available but on a discretionary basis. If those were written into the Bill, they would be made a rights-based provision. It would include DNA testing and support for family reunification. As you can imagine, some of the families are very fractured, and, when you introduce a new member, that reunification can upset the apple cart, and support services may be required. Sixty-six per cent of respondents think that the legal powers that could require or compel the institutions to make financial contributions to the cost of the inquiry are inadequate and need to be strengthened. Sixty-five per cent of respondents think that the powers to compel evidence are not strong enough. The advisory panels are welcomed by 65% of respondents.

On the questions thereafter, because of the percentages, we cannot be sure that it is a majority view, so I have broken it down into the next cohort of people. This slide shows a word cloud derived from the survey responses, and the PowerPoint presentation will be available to you if you wish to use it.

The next lot is the questions on which there was less agreement and less coalescence around a particular view. Sixty-two per cent of respondents disagree with the proposed posthumous date. For a lot of people, the proposed posthumous date is a problem and needs to be changed. The list of institutions eligible for standardised payments is also a problem for 62% of respondents. Likewise, 62% said that they would not be prepared to take a lower standardised payment in order to bring more people in if there was a financial limit, feeling that that is unfair. I do not think that I am going off-piste by saying that the view is that the money needs to be found to do the job properly.

Fifty-eight per cent of respondents feel that the spouse and surviving children should be eligible to receive a payment on behalf of a deceased relative. According to 53% of respondents, the Bill should be guided by international human rights standards. Fifty-three per cent of respondents also feel that they are included in the inquiry. Again, there is a margin of error in that, but a substantial number of people felt that they are included. However, that means that a lot of people do not feel that they are included. On whether clause 2 outlines the main areas for investigation and how other areas could be added, notwithstanding the fact that it makes provision for you to add areas later, 52% agree that that needs attention. This slide shows the word cloud associated with those findings.

I move on to the final cohort of results. There are very mixed views and quite a division of opinions on these issues. There is a mixed view on whether the Bill makes sufficient provision to monitor implementation of the inquiry's recommendations. My reading of the Bill is that there is not very much in it about that. Some people might not have understood that question, but that is the result. There is quite a lot of division of opinion on the proposed standardised payment amount, with 40% of respondents disagreeing with it.

Again, 40% agree that their relative's experience is part of the inquiry. Had there been 60% on the other side, I would have reported that, but, actually, there is a mixed view on that. "This does not apply to me" and "It does not affect me" were among the other possible response options. The 40% represents the option that got the largest score — all the other options on that item had smaller scores.

Forty per cent of respondents disagree that £80 million is an appropriate level of funding for the inquiry, and, again, there are mixed responses on the other options. There was also disagreement on whether clause 4 includes the main "relevant persons". There was no majority view on that. Only 38% agree with the scope of the inquiry and the inclusion of institutions and their pathways and practices. There are strongly held views on that matter, as there are on all the issues, even if those views are held by only a minority of victims and survivors. Nonetheless, if you can imagine what it is like to feel that your experience, which is everything to you, is being excluded, you will understand that that drives people to be very upset and angry about the exclusions in the Bill. The last slide shows the word cloud associated with those results. That is the end of my presentation.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): That is good, because I was about to say that we have gone well over the five minutes. Thank you very much, Marie, for outlining the consultation that you undertook.

I will pick up on one of the outcomes, specifically on whether people would be happy to take a lower standardised payment to increase the number of people who are eligible. That very much contradicts the evidence that we have received. Everybody who has responded to us so far thinks that the standardised payment should be more.

Professor Breen Smyth: Yes.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): How do we marry those two things?

Professor Breen Smyth: I may have misrepresented that result. There is a strong feeling that it is not fair to even ask that question. It is a view that is held by a very small number of people, so I put it to the people who responded to the survey. The very strong view on the part of some is, "No, no, no, you cannot ask us to do that; that is not fair".

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. In the responses, did you unearth any strong threads about what people feel would be a good settling point for the posthumous date?

Professor Breen Smyth: There has been mention of 1995, but I am not sure. People did not coalesce around one particular date. The general principle is to have the maximal inclusion possible. That applies to all the dates that end up excluding people. It also applies to the institutions and, indeed, people who were outside those institutions. There is a general principle about including more people. It should involve not only people who endured institutionalisation but those who were separated from their family or who experienced forced separation from their infant or, if you were the infant, your being separated from your parent and trafficked or sent to another part of the country and adopted. All those people should be involved, irrespective of whether they were in an institution. That is a general view, and you do not find too many voices being raised against it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. I have a final quick question about the finding under the heading, "My relative's experience is part of the inquiry". Did you get a sense of what that looks like?

Professor Breen Smyth: The people who responded positively to that are content that they are included in the Bill as it stands. There are other people who could not respond positively on it because they do not feel that that is the case. For example, at the familiarisation event at WAVE, I met for the first time three women who were not part of any process and did not know anything about the Bill. I nobbled the Committee Clerk, who had to mark up a copy of the Bill for them to take home and read. We are trying to catch up with things as we go along and as more people emerge. When I go about my daily life, people identify themselves to me. Indeed, just yesterday, I met another woman whose mother had been in a mother-and-baby home and who did not know her sibling. As I go about my business and people know what I am doing, they come forward to identify themselves. It is hard to be definitive about any of it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): It is the first time, for me, that that question has come up.

Mr Dickson: I appreciate the work that has been done on all this so far. I will be brief, because you have, I think, already answered the question about whether the Bill should include provision on forced separation outside the specified institutions. Will you just expand a little on what is meant by "forced separation"?

Professor Breen Smyth: Think, let us say, about a family whose teenage daughter was pregnant outside of wedlock. It seems to me that a degree of coercive control was involved if that child, as was very often the case, was sent off to give birth without the support of their family, and in making it clear that the child who was then born was unacceptable to the family circle. That is an issue in itself; it is a societal issue and a family issue.

I will speak to the need for support for family reunification. You can see how a woman or a child who has been through that may well have all sorts of fractured family relationships. They may be brought back into a family that has found ways of coping by not speaking about things. When you then bring the child in, lo and behold, everything is up for grabs again, and all the terribly difficult issues have to be renegotiated. There is a huge burden on families. When you watch TV programmes about long-lost relatives, you see happy stories, but — I am a former family therapist — the issues are very difficult and troubling for people, they have long-term effects, and our mental health services will not be of assistance.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thanks for the survey. My question is about money for legal support. Why do people feel that they need that?

Professor Breen Smyth: There is, I think, provision for legal representation for witnesses to the inquiry, but, when I first joined the forum, a case was made to me on the need for legal advice about the Bill in general, which was why we organised the event in the Europa Hotel.

Ms Ní Chuilín: That is fine. I just wondered about that, because there is provision for it in the Bill.

My other question is about the ability to compel. From what you said about the survey, it seems as though, based on their experience, some victims and survivors are not confident that the measures in the Bill will be enough to compel the institutions to pay or to give evidence.

Professor Breen Smyth: I do not know of anybody on the forum who is not strongly of the view that the institutions should pay. That view is, I think, shared here. The issue is about the mechanisms by which payment is compelled and the strength of the power of compulsion on the institutions and how you set about using that. That has been discussed at the forum, and, again, it is about taking the maximal approach — every power that is available to the Government needs to be exercised, bearing in mind that the Government are one of the parties to this. Think about it from the point of view of victims and survivors: authority has let them down very badly for decades. They have very little faith and trust in authority, so they want to see copper-fastened mechanisms in the Bill.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thank you.

Ms McLaughlin: Carál covered the points that I was going to make. The first was on whether the legal powers are strong enough to get contributions from the institutions. From the evidence that the Committee has heard from victims and survivors, that is a really strong and ingrained part of the justice element.

Professor Breen Smyth: Absolutely.

Ms McLaughlin: It was interesting to hear your response on that. I was also going to ask about clause 16. Carál covered both the points that I had questions about, so I will not put you through them again. Thank you.

Mr Gaston: I have a couple of questions. The survey is very helpful, but I am concerned that we got responses from only 23% of the 236 people whom the survey was circulated to. This is the stage where people have the opportunity to engage to effect change and get something that reflects them and is fit for purpose. How do we get more people to engage at this stage?

Professor Breen Smyth: That troubles me as well. I have already said that the reliance on Zoom meetings and email is a barrier for many people who are affected because they are not on the internet. They might be able to take a phone call, but face-to-face communication is absolutely the way into this. That is why I keep turning up at your familiarisation sessions. I scan the audience for faces that I have not seen before, and then I go and talk to those people.

In other meetings on other business, people will wait until they get me on my own and say, "I've got you on your own, so that I can tell you that I was a birth mother". Shame is very often the barrier. That barrier of shame is higher in some communities than in others, as witnessed by the responses from the two communities. There is a role for community leaders of all kinds, including yourselves, to put out the word about this and make strong statements on shame. The shame should not belong to victims and survivors; the shame should belong to the perpetrators of the abuses that the inquiry covers. That is a political job, and I am not a politician.

Mr Gaston: I get that we have a role to play in that, but I fear that, if members of the forum who have engaged with you in the past are reluctant to talk to you about it, they are not going to respond to the survey or step through the door to talk to us in this room. We have taken measures to change the room and make it more aesthetically neutral.

Professor Breen Smyth: They are not reluctant to talk to me if I sit and talk to them, but they do not like surveys: those are two separate issues. For me, the gold standard is face-to-face contact. People have told me that they do not like surveys, that the survey is too long etc. They say, "I'm fed up doing bloody surveys. There are surveys every 10 minutes, and it's awful". It is also about having respect for the people involved and talking to them face-to-face. Sitting down and giving them your time is the preferred way forward. You will have a huge difficulty reaching all 6,000 people. Some of them do not want to come forward and be identified, and they have every right not to be. At the same time, there are people — I come across them all the time — who do not know what is going on and do not know that they are included.

Mr Gaston: My quick final question —

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I will bring you back in Timothy. We are going to have three round-table events across the country. Those will be our opportunity to have face-to-face conversations. Please, go ahead, Timothy.

Mr Gaston: Carál alluded to clause 21(2) on legal expenses. Is there an expectation that everybody who attends will have a solicitor with them and that that will be paid for. Has that been costed as part of the process? The Bill states:

I do not want to be in a place where people are expecting something that will not be delivered. There needs to be a clear understanding of what the legal expenses are, and that there is a purse to pay for them, before we build up expectations.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I have that as a question: how will people be supported to make their application to the redress board? That relates to representation at the inquiry.

Professor Breen Smyth: Yes.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Those questions are all up in the air at the minute, Timothy, but we will certainly put them to TEO.

Professor Breen Smyth: There is an expectation that there will be legal support, but whether that is the case is a matter for you to take forward. There is a strong desire that people should not have to appear in front of an inquiry without some kind of legal representation.

Mr Gaston: Thank you.

Mr Kingston: Have you done any analysis of, or have you asked about, the community affiliation or background, in a Northern Ireland context — Protestant/unionist, Catholic/nationalist — of those who have engaged with the forum and taken part in the questionnaire?

Professor Breen Smyth: That was not included in the questionnaire. I know of two people in the forum who identified themselves as having come through the Protestant institutions. The majority came through the Catholic institutions, and that is borne out by evidence that TEO has from elsewhere. There is a predominant representation of Catholic institutions in the body of victims and survivors, as far as I am aware. It is interesting to note that some of the people who have identified themselves to me, but said that they do not want to be part of the process, came through the Protestant institutions. However, that is not scientific; it is impressionistic.

Mr Kingston: I have a concern that there is a perception that it has affected more people in the Catholic community. The institutions concerned were from both sides of the community, and there were state agencies involved. I get the impression that, in this process, it is more difficult to reach people in the Protestant community.

Professor Breen Smyth: That is right.

Mr Kingston: You are saying that your analysis of responses backs that up.

Professor Breen Smyth: I spoke to a political representative of the Protestant community who said, "Well, of course, this doesn't affect the Protestant community". Therefore, it is not just victims and survivors who have that impression. It is much more broad: political representatives have that impression as well. There is, therefore, a job of work to be done. I am not going to tell you what to do, but there is an impression that needs to be corrected.

Mr Kingston: Is your engagement just with members of the forum specifically, or have you reached out beyond the forum membership?

Professor Breen Smyth: I have other roles, largely in the loyalist community. Since I work largely in the loyalist community, people have come forward in that context. Women who have approached me, and women who I have approached at your familiarisation sessions, who went through the Catholic institutions are happy to be included, but the people who come to me from the loyalist community are not. We would need to do a large investigation to find out what factors cause that, but that is my experience, for what it is worth.

Mr Kingston: Are you saying that people from the Protestant/unionist/loyalist community who have been affected by these issues —

Professor Breen Smyth: Yes, they have approached me.

Mr Kingston: They have not wished to engage, but you know that they were affected.

Professor Breen Smyth: They told me.

Mr Kingston: Right. In what way did they have that conversation with you then?

Professor Breen Smyth: Somebody might wait for me after a meeting and say, "I know that you're doing this work with the inquiry. I just want to let you know that I'm a birth mother, but I don't want to be part of this. I just wanted to let you know". Something is compelling them to reveal themselves, and I would leave it open to have —

Mr Kingston: They want to keep it concealed.

Professor Breen Smyth: In the instances that I have come across, they are concerned for their families, particularly their children. You have to think about why that would be. I keep going back to shame: those women still feel some kind of stigma.

Mr Kingston: Even though they could participate anonymously.

Professor Breen Smyth: You can be anonymous up to a point in the process, but, if you want to participate in the forum, it is quite difficult to do that anonymously. Some people do not turn their cameras on, but we still need a link to them, and they need to identify themselves to TEO staff so that they can send out the link for the meetings.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Chair, was there a similar experience with the historical institutional abuse inquiry? Do you remember that there was a group of people who came afterwards?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Whiteabbey Training School.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Yes, that is it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): They did not feel that it was relevant to them, and that is why the truth and recovery part has to be included.

Did you want to say something, Timothy?

Mr Gaston: No.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you so much. We are trying to be prompt with our evidence sessions. If you have anything else that you could forward, please do so. We look forward to seeing you at the round-table sessions. It will be useful to have you there. Thank you for now.

Professor Breen Smyth: Before I leave, I will raise another issue, which is to pay attention to language. Some of the communication that I have seen referenced "testimony". In the Protestant community, that can mean something rather different. Just be careful about language with regard to the two communities. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you, Marie. That is a good point.