Around 4,000 industrial school abuse survivors could qualify for new supportsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nThe issue of pensions and medical cards went into further mediation.<\/p>\n
In February Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin delivered a State apology to survivors of these industrial schools and information on the supports was published by the department in March. <\/p>\n
However, the campaigners say many of these services are still not in place. Three of the hunger strikers, Donovan, Dunlevy Greene and Patton O\u2019Connell, met representatives from the Department of Education on Thursday to raise these concerns. <\/p>\n
Dunlevy Greene was sent to the Mount St Vincent Industrial School in Co Limerick when she was three-years-old, after her mother died in childbirth. Donovan and Patton O\u2019Connell were sent to The Pembroke Alms industrial school in Tralee, Co Kerry, when they were under one year old for reasons described on their court order as \u201clack of parental guardianship\u201d. <\/p>\n
Speaking after the meeting on Thursday, the three hunger strikers said they are still waiting on the support that was promised in order to \u201cmove on with our lives\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we got the original apology [from then taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 1999] we were promised these services, and they were never forthcoming. We were promised lifelong supports for health, and we never got them,\u201d Dunlevy Greene said after the meeting. <\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, we are 27 years fighting the government on this,\u201d Patton O\u2019Connell said. <\/p>\n
At the meeting on Thursday they sought the appointment of health liaison officers, a dedicated housing officer and the removal of a requirement to prepay for education courses in order to access a grant scheme. <\/p>\n
The meeting was \u201cpositive, productive, and is moving forward to resolution,\u201d Donovan said.<\/p>\n
However the marks of the hunger strike remain with them. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was horrific. No one came to check on us. I lost over three stone. I\u2019ve now got rheumatoid arthritis, my eyesight has suffered and psychologically my mental state is bad,\u201d Donovan said.<\/p>\n
The protest itself outside the gates of Leinster House was difficult too, because passersby would ask them why they were there and they found themselves retelling their whole life stories. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur history has been sanitised and just forgotten about. We\u2019d go through it every day, and we did it because the public needs to know. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of students came up to interview us, and we were sorry in a way that these young ones had to take this on board, but glad in a way that they were going to put it out into the public arena again, and maybe it won\u2019t be sanitised and go down in history because it deserves to,\u201d Dunlevy Greene said.<\/p>\n
The Department of Education has been contacted for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three survivors of industrial schools in Ireland who went on hunger strike last year and are still waiting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[15526,9,10,13264,18,13,14,6,19,17,957,11,12,1844,15,16,5765,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-636342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-bertie-ahern","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-department-of-education","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kerry","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-limerick","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-micheal-martin","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117092509873751733","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}