Concern has been raised over “the poor take up” of the Mother and Baby Institutions redress scheme which the Special Advocate for Survivors has described as “exclusionary, poorly advertised, and re-traumatising” for many applicants.

With less than 10% of the redress budget spent after nearly two years of the scheme being open, Patricia Carey has said there is “an urgent need” for Government to make every possible effort to ensure that no survivor misses out on their redress.

Her comments come following the publication of the first annual report of the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme by the Department of Children which is dated June 2025 and relates to 2024, the year the scheme was launched.

The aim of the scheme has been to provide financial payments, and health support to people who spent time in Mother and Baby or County Home Institutions.

Between March 2024 (when the scheme began) and December 2024 there were 5,997 applications. 59% of which were via the online portal and 41% by post.

5,031 Notices of Determination were issued, and 3,475 applicants accepted an offer and were paid.

The most common age brackets for applicants were 61-70, 71-80 and 51-60 in that order (4,579 applications).

8% of applications were aged 41-50 years and 7% of applications were in the 81-90 age group.

Those 40 or under made up approximately 3% of applications and those over 90 accounted for 1% in total.

Overall, 4,685, or 83%, of all applications were within Ireland.


3,475 applicants to the scheme accepted an offer and were paid (file image)

583 or 10% were from the United Kingdom, while the remaining 6% were from other countries including Belgium, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ivory Coast, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden and Turkey.

For “straight-forward cases”, on average, it took approximately 62 days for cases to reach Notices of Determination, according to the report.

Thirty-two complaints were made about the process, the majority of which (14) related to the length of time people awaited payment.

The total expenditure on the payment scheme from January 2024 to December 2024 was €62 million.

With revised estimates for the payment scheme discussed at the Oireachtas Children’s Committee showing an underspend of over €68.5m in 2025, Ms Carey has called for the expansion of the redress scheme to include all those excluded from redress, including those boarded out.

In a statement, she has rejected that the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme is achieving its goal of speedy, easy and trauma-informed access to redress for survivors and affected persons.

While she strongly encouraged all who are eligible to apply, Ms Carey said a litany of complaints had been received by her office from survivors about the many failures of the redress scheme since its launch.

Ms Carey raised these concerns in her first annual report which was published last summer.

They include ongoing operational issues with the payment scheme; issues around records of time spent in institutions; an inconsistent trauma-informed care approach across the scheme; poor promotion and advertising of the scheme and exclusion from the redress scheme which has been causing ongoing hurt and pain to survivors

“Over the last 20 months my office has received daily calls and emails from Survivors unhappy with the scheme, many of whom have shared the negative impact that engagement with the scheme has had on their lives and are looking for support,” she said.

“It is incumbent on the Minister to address these myriad issues in order to ensure all survivors receive the redress they are entitled to.”