Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I welcome Maria Arbuckle and Paul McClarey from Truth Recovery NI (TRNI). Thank you for coming. I know that you are familiar with the Committee, but, obviously, this is a really important day for you. Thank you for providing a submission in advance. We have agreed amongst ourselves that if a question has been asked, we are not going to repeat it, because we do not want to be dragging things out. I invite you to make some opening remarks on the Bill.

Mr Paul McClarey (Truth Recovery NI): I declare an interest as a victim and survivor rep on the independent panel. I am here today, however, in my capacity as a victim and survivor and as a member of the steering group of TRNI. I apologise — I hope that you can hear me — because, sadly, my voice is leaving me. I suppose that that is a consequence of the lifelong trauma that many victims and survivors suffer. There are serious health issues for many of us.

Truth Recovery NI is one of the three main support groups. You have already heard evidence from Oonagh and Mechelle, and you will hear from Adele and Barbara from the other support group next. We have 126 members, comprising mainly children, now adults; birth mothers; and laundry survivors. They are all active members. We run residentials, which are supported by the WAVE Trauma Centre. The residentials give individuals an opportunity to support and grow with one another, and many of us have become good friends. Many of our group do not attend the Victims and Survivors Consultation Forum, but they have equal agency and an equal voice in the process. We welcome the Committee's invitation to hear our voice.

It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge and recognise the work of officials in getting the legislation to where it is at currently. Equally, I acknowledge the commitment of the First Minister and the deputy First Minister in accelerating the Bill's introduction. We had urged them to act with speed, recognising the age and health of many victims and survivors across our community, and they responded. We welcome that.

There are many aspects of the legislation that we fully support. We support the mechanisms that will allow other institutions — private nursing homes and whatever else, if evidence is uncovered by the independent panel or the inquiry that they should be — to be included. We support the scope and the structures, and we welcome the fact that there will be a benefit/discount in any redress payment made. Like Birth Mothers and their Children for Justice, we cannot support any legislation that would ask for the inclusion of the entire adoption system. I will now hand over to Maria.

Ms Maria Arbuckle (Truth Recovery NI): Hi, everybody. Thank you for letting us come here to do this. I am not very articulate, but I will give it to you from the hip.

I will raise some critical concerns about the Bill, the first of which is with clause 2(1). In 2021, we were told that the inquiry would be victim- and survivor-led, yet we had no part to play in shaping the Bill. We are now being left out of the inquiry's terms of reference.

How can you claim to speak for us if we are not even in the room?

Secondly, on clause 1(6), people who were fostered out from institutions under the historical institutional abuse (HIA) inquiry remit did not receive any redress for their time spent in foster care. That is an injustice that cannot be ignored.

I did an interview on BBC's 'Good Morning Ulster' with Chris Buckler on my files and my time in foster care. I wanted a new inquiry to be set up. That was in 2022. I think that the Committee has the letter that I got from Phil Scraton. He came on the radio and said that we would be included in the pathways and practices. The pathways and practices in the Bill, however, are only for people who were born in mother-and-baby institutions, Magdalene laundries and workhouses. We are not included. Nazareth House was included in the first set of institutions, but now it is not in there. If it were to go by the original set, we would be included.

Nazareth House in Derry came under the HIA inquiry, but the pathways and practices from it did not. I have proof that states that I was placed with a foster family, and it was there that I was subjected to serious sexual abuse, which is beyond and outside the Historical Institutional Abuse Redress Board's remit. The HIA inquiry stated:

That is proof, but Nazareth House is going to be left out of this inquiry as well, which I do not think is fair.

Clause 3(1) in the Bill leaves it up to the independent panel to decide which pathways and practices to bring in from any other institutions, but the report from 2021 is clear that all pathways and practices should apply. Nothing less is acceptable.

In clause 7, the requirement of impartiality means that no victim or survivor can sit on the inquiry panel. That strips away lived experience and accountability and undermines public confidence in the process.

On redress, the Bill proposes 2011 as the posthumous cut-off date. That is wholly inadequate. The real date should be 1922, which is when the first mother-and-baby institution in Northern Ireland opened. To do anything else denies nearly a century of abuse and systemic neglect. Paul will talk more about that.

On the posthumous claims, the Bill allows only the spouse and children of deceased mothers to claim, but what about the children who died? There is no claim for them. Many of them never lived long enough to have a spouse or children of their own. We are big advocates for a sibling being able to claim for a deceased sibling, especially as many of them died as children and therefore have no family in the descending line. They have an equal right to be acknowledged through a token payment of redress. How else will the state recognise them as named individuals who suffered equally to those who are currently eligible?

Many of the now-deceased children who made it to adulthood struggled with identity, depression and maintaining relationships and therefore did not have a family of their own. I know that because of my brother. He had gone to the doctor. Every test was done, and the doctor called his wife in and said to her that, subconsciously, my brother did not want to bring a child into the world, because of what he had gone through. Their siblings should therefore be able to apply for the token financial recognition of £2,000 for them as named affected individuals. Why should they be excluded? Moreover, under the Bill, birth mothers are unable to apply for the posthumous £2,000 for their deceased birth child. That is also wrong. What if a birth mother has searched for years for her adopted child only to find out that they are deceased? We ask you not to close the door on those voices, those lives and that truth.

Last but not least, survivors of workhouses are excluded from the standard payment. Why? They number the fewest survivors, and they are the oldest survivors. By the time that the inquiry is done, they will probably all have passed away. Make it make sense, please. Why have they been left out?

Mr McClarey: I will bring our opening statement to a close and talk specifically about the date for which a posthumous claim on behalf of a deceased relative can be made. In the Bill as it stands, that is on or after 29 September 2011. I am an affected person. Many of us are disappointed that, despite our collective efforts, we have been unable to persuade the Executive Office to change the date. Let me be unambiguous and crystal clear: many of us believe that the date should be 1922. We have simply been ignored by officials and had our voices silenced. That is particularly alarming because officials were well aware of our concerns before the legislation in front of you was prepared.

TEO submitted policy details to the consultation forum that included a proposed date of November 2021, which was the date on which the First Minister and the deputy First Minister accepted the recommendations of the 'Truth, Acknowledgement and Accountability' report. That was the date that they put in the policy proposal. It was met with considerable outrage and hurt by a broad spectrum of victims and survivors. As a result, survivor groups got together, and we mobilised to take some action to voice our concern. At a subsequent meeting last year, I read out a statement expressing collective frustration at the date and walked out of the consultation forum meeting. In solidarity, many other victims and survivors walked out as well, including leading members of well-established support groups. I was struck and moved by the collective sense of solidarity on the issue. Many victims and survivors who were not directly affected could still see the injustice.

There followed a 12-week public consultation on the draft legislation, launched on 27 June 2024, the results of which were published in January 2025. Some 245 individuals and 24 groups or organisations responded: a consultation base of 269 respondents. Of them, 91% agreed that posthumous claims should be allowed, and 60% disagreed that the November 2021 date should be used as the basis for making posthumous claims. The consultation paper stated:

What is the point of asking the question when the answer is not listened to? It is clear, however, that some effort was made to move the date, because it was then moved from November 2021 to September 2011, as it appears before us now. What happened to:

That ham-fisted attempt to appease us has caused more harm. We now have a situation in which victim-survivors whose deceased relatives are now included in the posthumous date category are carrying guilt and shame because many others are still excluded. Is that trauma-informed decision-making? Absolutely not. Our voices remain ignored, yet, clearly, a date can be moved.

The only justification for the proposed date that I can see when I look through the papers is based on finances: on saving a few quid. How insulting to the memory of our loved ones. How is it fair and just? Part 1 of the legislation before us deals with the inquiry. It allows posthumous evidence to be presented to the public inquiry on behalf of someone deceased before 2011 to contribute to the aggregated truth and recommendations that that very panel might make. Part 2, which deals with redress, does not, however, allow a posthumous claim to be made on behalf of that person whose evidence could be submitted. Where is the justice in that proposition? Is that fair? Is that equality? Is that the right thing to do?

If my mother were alive today, she would be 80 years old and eligible for a standardised payment, but, because she died in February 1975, aged 29 years, she is excluded. Her life, in the inquiry's view, therefore means nothing. Let Hansard record her name: Kathleen Veronica Purcell, wee Katie, my mum. She left school aged 15 and went to work in a shirt factory in Derry. She was raised by her maternal grandmother, as her own mother was in Muckamore Abbey. Social services had claimed her to be a prostitute. A social worker wrote in the report on my mother:

I have recently uncovered a paternity statement. I will read some details of that. A paternity statement that my mother wrote describes how Katie and a friend visited the home of a 40-year-old married man while his wife was on holiday. She had just turned 18, and he had sex with both girls. Her friend was 20. She went on to say in the statement:

In her eyes, he was a boyfriend, but, in reality, he was a predator. She was a vulnerable young girl who, like many in that city, was preyed upon.

Pregnant, she went to Marianville mother-and-baby home on the Ormeau Road. After I was born, she was transferred directly to St Mary's laundry on the Ormeau Road site for what we believe was further punishment for having a mixed-race child. She entered the mother-and-baby institution in November 1963 and left the laundry in June 1964. She tried in vain to keep her son. I was in a children's home in Derry, but she was forced to give me up for adoption in May 1965. She was assessed for special needs in June 1965 and found to have the mental age of a 12-year-old, yet no one in social services questioned the fact that she could not have had the mental capacity to sign and understand fully the adoption consent form that she had signed one month earlier, an event in itself that lacked any informed consent as she was taken from the shirt factory floor to the boss's office and then into the local shop where a justice of the peace worked to sign a consent form for my adoption.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Paul, we have only 45 minutes, sorry.

Mr McClarey: I am almost finished.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you.

Mr McClarey: Latterly, her life descended into a spiral heavily dependent on alcohol. She lurched from hostel to hostel, finally becoming homeless and dying as a result of burns in a homeless squat in 1975: twenty-nine tragic years, failed by family, failed by religious orders, failed by social services and failed by the state. Who would have believed that, exactly 50 years after her death, she would be failed again by the very institutions of the state that are supposed to be delivering truth and justice?

In closing, I have one question: will you fail Katie? Will you fail all the other mums and their children, the brothers and the sisters whom we have lost before 2011, or will you use your influence and your vote to make her life matter and to recognise them?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. Sorry to rush you, but —

Mr McClarey: You are OK.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): — members will want to ask you about your thoughts on the wording of the Bill.

Maria, I will pick up on your concerns that you had no role in shaping the Bill. Do you feel that the consultation up until now has not been sufficiently inclusive? Is there anything else that the Committee can do? We are hearing your evidence today, but is there anything else that we should be doing to make sure that you feel a sense of ownership of the Bill and the process?

Ms Arbuckle: The whole way through the consultation, we have been saying that we have not been included. They do not include us in anything. We sit there, and we are like wee puppets to them. There was a meeting on the Bill. The First Minister was 10 minutes late, while the deputy First Minister was later than that again. They literally had five minutes each and then rushed out of the room to take the Bill to the Chamber, and we still did not know exactly what was in it. We did not read it until afterwards.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I will pick up on another point that you made about the requirement for impartiality. There is a clause in the Bill on the potential establishment of an advisory panel. How do you feel about that? How that might muddy the waters for those people who want to advise the judges and the legal team but who also want to ensure that they have their own voices heard? Do you have any thoughts about the advisory panel?

Ms Arbuckle: Yes, they did say about having victims and survivors on the advisory panel, but why would they not be on the panel itself? They are the ones with the lived experience. Would it not be better to have somebody on the panel who has that lived experience?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK.

Mr McClarey: The justification for not having victims and survivors on the panel seems to be, and it is actually quite insulting, that religious orders will not be represented on it, which is understandable, but to equate victims and survivors with the perpetrators of those —

Ms Arbuckle: Crimes.

Mr McClarey: — crimes — yes, that is a great word — seems a little unjust.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. I was just checking the wording of the Bill. Clause 31 is titled "Entitlement to a payment", and I am not sure how to read it myself. You mentioned the mothers of deceased children. My reading of it, and I may be wrong, is that subsection (5) states that if people are eligible under subsection (2) or (4) — in other words, if they were a mother or a child — they will be eligible for the deceased person's payment. Will that not bring in the mothers of deceased children?

Mr McClarey: I think that that relates to posthumous claims specifically. Our interpretation of the legislation as it stands is that it will mean that a birth mother cannot apply for a deceased child.

Ms Arbuckle: It will be the adoptive mother, because the birth mother is not classed as the mother, but why should it not be the person who gave birth to the child?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I agree.

Ms Arbuckle: That is what we are trying to say.

Mr McClarey: It also means that siblings cannot —.

Ms Arbuckle: If the mother is dead, and the child is dead, we ask that the siblings be able to apply. The mother's children are allowed to go for the mother's payment, so why should the siblings not be allowed to go for the child's?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes, I know, and I appreciate that. I had not really thought of it from the siblings' point of view until you submitted your testimony.

Mr Dickson: Thank you very much for your incredibly powerful contribution today. May I tease out something? You referred to concerns about widening the legislation to include the adoption system, but it is clear that children who were adopted were also, in some circumstances, equally subjected to abuse and had other things happen to them.

I am concerned that there may even have been collusion between the institutions that placed children for adoption and that they knew what was going to happen to the child when they were placed into adoption. Can you tease out a little more for us your concerns about widening the Bill to cover areas of adoption?

Mr McClarey: Our primary concern is that, if you have too wide a lens, there is a real danger that you will fail to fully investigate what is required. In some respects, whilst they are potentially live issues, it dilutes truth and justice for many of us. If there are things about the wider adoption system, that is an investigation and inquiry for another day, in our view. We do know that, as you suggested, there are people on the margins, but we are satisfied that the legislation provides entry for them should evidence be uncovered.

Mr Dickson: Concern has been raised that the legislation does not cover all the circumstances or all the institutions — it lists 11. We are all aware that there were many other places and spaces where mothers or children were placed. Can you assist us by providing us with the names of places and institutions that you have from the people who you are working with that should be added to the list?

Ms Arbuckle: There was a list, and I cannot find it. I cannot remember. We had the report, but then we had another booklet with the report, and I think that the list was in there. It was a longer list than the one in the Bill, and there were a lot of places in it that are not in the Bill, but I cannot remember. We got the report, and then there was another booklet.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Do you mean the wee explanatory booklet?

Ms Arbuckle: It might have been that one.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): It sat inside the report.

Ms Arbuckle: No, not the Bill.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): It sat inside it.

Ms Arbuckle: Yes. It sat inside the report, and it had a longer list.

Mr Dickson: Finally, very briefly, is there any evidence, or are you aware, or are any of the people who you have worked with aware, of any evidence of what might be described as informal arrangements? We have talked about the list that is in the legislation, and we have talked about, potentially, a wider list of maternity homes or other places. Is there any evidence of what might be described as informal arrangements for mothers to be taken into? Small communities and villages where a person, predominantly a woman, would have taken in two or three girls to have their babies. I am talking about informal spaces.

Ms Arbuckle: There was in Belfast, was there not? It was called Malone House or Malone Square or something.

Mr McClarey: I think so, yes.

Mr Dickson: Even less formal than that? Families knew that, if you went to a certain person, she could take in two or three pregnant women.

Ms Arbuckle: The independent panel is working on that, and it should have the list of it all to bring it forward.

Mr Dickson: We want to make sure that any amendments that we bring to the legislation are as open and encompassing as possible. I do not want to restrict things; I want to ensure that we bring everybody in.

Ms Arbuckle: We have wanted it to be inclusive all along.

Mr Dickson: Thank you.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Thank you for coming to the Committee. It is not easy. I assure you that we do not want to fail anyone. We absolutely want to use this process where, if amendments need to be made, they are made, and they are made on the basis of lived experience and all that, across the board. Whether they are accepted or not is a different story, but I want to say that that is the case.

You have experience of working for years on this trauma, and you have worked with other people who live with the trauma and will probably die with the trauma. There was a suggestion at one of the panels earlier that, while many on the list in the Bill are religious orders, it does not cover them all. I would like to further explore the work between the religious orders. We have been told before that, while they were separate in their religion, they worked together on the issues of exporting babies and all the rest. Have victims and survivors, particularly those who may have come from other institutions or from homes that are not mentioned in the Bill, been involved in the process? Have any of them come forward? You were both on the consultative forum. From all the discussions that you had with each other in the build up to this, can you say whether those victims and survivors are aware that the process is going on?

Mr McClarey: We have members who were in the Salvation Army's Thorndale House, but not in the same numbers as we have from the Catholic religious orders. There are people out there who are involved with us.

Ms Arbuckle: We also have one living member from the workhouses. He actually lives in America. I do not see why he should be failed or left out. He is 89. My grandmother was in a workhouse. We have not found her child yet, so we do not even know whether they are living or dead. The one under her is 87. We do not even know yet whether it is a boy or a girl. I am getting DNA tested to find out whether we can get some kind of match that we do not know about to see whether there is that connection.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Is that DNA testing paid for from your own pocket?

Ms Arbuckle: WAVE Trauma Centre did a pilot scheme and said that I could be involved in it.

Ms Ní Chuilín: That is good. Finally, there are plenty of clauses here that each of us agrees on. We are unanimous in trying to get stuff, which is really good for the Committee, but there are certainly clauses that we will ask the officials to amend. The issue of the posthumous date has come up at every presentation, just to say that. We will do our best to ensure that the Bill is more reflective of what it needs to be.

Ms Arbuckle: The thing is, it could easily have gone back to the 1800s, because that is when the workhouses opened. The last workhouse closed in 1948. In between those dates, 1922 is a good year, because it covers the laundries, the workhouses and the mother-and-baby homes. If you take it that way, 1922 is bang in the middle.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): That is a good point.

Ms Arbuckle: You were saying something there. My case is different. I grew up in care all my life, so I had no parents. It was the nuns of the children's home — it was not even a children's home; it was a training school that I was in, although I had not committed a crime — who sent me to Dublin to have the baby, but then they came to Dublin, picked the baby up and brought him back to the North to be adopted.

Ms Ní Chuilín: It was child trafficking.

Ms Arbuckle: Well, the gardaí have said that there was no criminal activity, and the PSNI has come back to say that there was no criminal activity. They ask how I can say that it is child trafficking, and I say that, back in those days, you could not even bring butter, alcohol or washing powder up over the border, but those nuns could bring babies up and down over the border, with some of them at the car parks getting paid for them — but, hey ho, that is a different story.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): That is a really good point that you made at the end. Thank you.

Ms McLaughlin: That is a very good analogy. Thank you so much for your testimonies; they are very powerful.

We talked about the evidence that we got earlier on. How can we best ensure that there is meaningful engagement? You both spoke passionately about feeling that there was no meaningful engagement in the writing of the Bill.

Ms Arbuckle: There was none, Sinéad.

Ms McLaughlin: What can we do now? What could happen now to ensure that you feel that there has been meaningful engagement in the process as we continue the Committee Stage, the evidence and the consultation? We do not want you to feel that this has not worked for you either. Do you know what I am saying?

Ms Arbuckle: I am totally expecting to be left out of it, to be honest with you. I am getting too long in the tooth to start a new inquiry for the foster care system. I had asked about it in 2022 — I would have been three years into it by now. Do what you are doing today — engage with us — but, please, listen. Do not sit there and say, "We understand", and then walk away and do nothing about it. That is what I mean. TEO is a great bunch of guys. If you get them one by one, they are OK. Do not tell us that you are listening to us, and then go behind our backs and do something else. That is exactly what happened with the Bill.

Mr McClarey: Sinéad, the community lacks trust, and understandably so. As I described, we were unhappy with the policy consultation, and when we expressed that, we heard, "Don't worry. There'll be a public consultation". We were sceptical; it was a cosmetic exercise. The results, particularly on the posthumous date, are so heavy. What they are proposing is wrong. The majority of people said, "No date", or "1922", and they ignored that. They do not listen. That creates more mistrust. That is the situation that we are in. What can the Committee do? You can make and effect some change for us.

Ms Arbuckle: The day that the Bill was brought in to us was like a kick in the teeth for us. It was as if we had sat on the consultation for three years and it was not worth anything.

Ms McLaughlin: Is there other support that you need now?

Mr McClarey: In our view, the consultative forum — the structures and mechanisms — is in disarray. It is toxic and clearly not delivering. Many good people who were involved have moved away from that, and that is sad, because they have a powerful voice. They have lost confidence and faith in the process. The support from WAVE and VSS is very good.

Ms Arbuckle: It is excellent.

Mr McClarey: We need a commitment that that will continue. We are always worried that there will be cuts to that funding. I do not know what you do to build trust again. I do not know how many times we have to be asked a question, and when we give an answer, the answer is ignored. To be frank, I do not know how much longer we can take that.

Ms Arbuckle: I will give a prime example. I stepped back for six months. As you know, my son was murdered, and I took a step back for six months. When I came back after six months, the same thing was still going round the table. You just go round in circles. There is delay and delay. You just get tired at the end of it. Are we able to trust the Government?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We have two more members before we close this.

Mr Gaston: Marie, I have a quick question. You say that you expect to be excluded because you are from the foster system. How many people will that affect? Have we underestimated how many people that will rule out? Is there a need for a focus to be put in the future on those who have been in the foster care system?

Ms Arbuckle: The foster care system is a big system. Every summer, every child in the Nazareth House in Derry — I do not know about the one in Belfast — was sent out to foster families. Basically, they were taken off the streets. The nuns went round with the bands saying, "Do you want a kid for the summer?", because the place was getting painted. It got painted every summer. Those kids were put out into all different kinds of families, all around Northern Ireland. That children's home was full.

Mr Gaston: How many would that have been?

Ms Arbuckle: I do not know how many it held. I have no memory of that place. My memory is from my sisters. There were nine of us, and the oldest one was 11 years older than me. I have their memories of it. Two of them ended up in the laundries, which was a pathway from Nazareth House. They are going to be included. This is the thing: there were not many mothers from the laundries in Derry. Not a lot of girls gave birth in there. That seemed to be more in Belfast than in Derry.

Mr McClarey: I would have thought it would certainly be in the thousands. There will be institutional records; there must be.

Ms Arbuckle: All we ever got was one sheet of paper stating the day that we went in and the day we went out. It does not say what went on in between. It does not say, "She went to a foster family for the six weeks of the summer because we were getting the place painted". It will not say that in the records, but that is what happened. My sisters remember the names of the families that they went to and everything. One of my sisters went to the same family forever. She was never adopted by the family; she never actually lived in the house. She only went there during the summers. She calls them mum and dad. To this day, she calls them mum and dad. She is 65.

Mr Kingston: The Bill will establish the inquiry at the same time as the redress scheme, hopefully, because time is a factor. Have you had time to read the university report of 2021? Have you any comments on things that you feel were not delved into in that report and that you hope that an inquiry would be able to uncover or explore?

Mr McClarey: Yes. For me, the understanding of the lifelong trauma of the babies — we call ourselves now children, now adults — was not fully explored in the academic report. The focus was on the institutions and, rightly, the experience of the birth mothers. That is a huge area. In our network, that is a theme that has come through. From personal experience, I can say that the narrative that those babies would have a good life was, sadly, untrue. That trauma stays with you.

Ms Arbuckle: The other thing is that the children have no memory, because they were too young.

Mr McClarey: Exactly.

Ms Arbuckle: That is not right either. From the moment that you are pregnant — every woman here will understand this — and you go to the doctor, the doctor says, "Don't get stressed. It'll harm the baby". The minute a mother put her foot into one of those institutions, the baby was under the stress that she was under. That will always come out in the baby, even in later life. Even if they had the best life in the world, they are damaged psychologically. They lived with abandonment, rejection —. Help me, Paul.

Mr McClarey: Etc, etc.

Mr Kingston: I have one other question, if I have time.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Very quickly. We have another panel to hear from.

Mr Kingston: I thank you both for your personal testimonies and all that you have told us. There will be compensation from the relevant institutions. The state will be paying out in the first place, because of the timescale. Is it important to you that, ultimately, institutions pay compensation?

Ms Arbuckle: In my eyes, definitely. The state and the religious orders were in cahoots, so we cannot say that one is more to blame than the other. Who paid for the girls to be in the institutions? I did not pay for myself — I know that — so somebody paid for me. It had to be the state. Who paid for the babies in the holding centres? Nazareth House was a holding centre. Fahan was a holding centre. Who paid for the babies there? The babies did not pay for themselves; the state paid. The religious order kept them in there, and it treated the women and babies cruelly. Both are to blame, as far as I am concerned, and they should pay equally.

It does not matter how much money you give us; it is never going to change our lives. You see this ten grand? I could not give a damn whether it is ten grand. I do not care about inflation or anything like that. I have never had money, so I do not care about that, but the thing is that there are people who do care how much they get or who care about that money. That is their prerogative. If they think that ten grand is not enough for an interim payment, fair play to them: they need to fight that cause. I do not want to fight that cause, because money is nothing to me.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you both. You read from notes that I do not think we have in our packs, so, if there is anything that you want to share with the Committee afterwards, we would appreciate that.

Ms Arbuckle: I sent them through.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Do not worry. We will make sure that we circulate whatever you have sent through. Thank you so much.