Sisters to fight against 'unfair' mother and baby scheme

Two Belfast sisters have vowed to fight to get their dead mother acknowledged in a redress scheme for victims of mother and baby homes.

Roisin and Lisa Morris said it was unfair their mother Madeline had been frozen out of the scheme - like thousands of other women - because she died before the proposed cut-off date.

They only found out in 2024 that their mother had another daughter and yet would still not be acknowledged by the scheme.

Under plans drawn up by the Northern Ireland Executive only families of those victims who died after 29 September 2011 will be eligible for redress payments.

"Every mother and every child deserves justice, the dead can't speak for themselves but we will," Roisin Morris said.

A bill to establish an inquiry into mother and baby homes, Magdalene Laundries and workhouses and an associated redress scheme cleared its first stage in the Northern Ireland Assembly in June.

More than 10,000 pregnant women and girls passed through the institutions which were largely run by religious orders from 1920s until the 1990s.

The Morris sisters' mother was forced to give up her other daughter for adoption after entering the Marianvale mother and baby home in Belfast at the age of 18.

She died in 1992 and the daughter she was forced to give up only made contact with the rest of the family in 2024.

"We only found out last year that mammy had another daughter and it has been hard to get her heads around that and now we are being told our mammy is not even going to be acknowledged in this scheme. That is hard to take," Lisa Morris said.

The sisters joined other families whose mothers passed though the secretive institutions at a protest outside Stormont on Monday.

They are demanding changes to the proposed legislation.

The demonstration was organised by Adele Johnston, who was forced to give up her son after entering Marianvale mother and baby home in Newry.

Criticising the bill she said: "If you died before 2011 you are entitled to nothing, your history has just been written out, whereas if you died after 2011 you will get a sum of £2,000.

"It is a cost-cutting exercise and it is cruel and horrible, we are not prepared to accept it."

Ms Johnston said she hoped the bill would be amended as it passed through the legislative process at Stormont to ensure more families would be eligible for the redress scheme.

The executive's bill will establish a statutory public inquiry and a statutory redress scheme.

It comes after a consultation on proposals to establish an inquiry into mother-and-baby homes was launched in 2024.

The estimated cost is £80m, which includes almost £60m in initial redress payments to cover about 6,600 redress claims.

Each eligible person would receive a payment of £10,000 and a £2,000 payment will be made to each eligible family member on behalf of a loved one who had died since 29 September 2011.

A further Individually Assessed Payment (IAP) for the specific harm suffered by an individual would follow the public inquiry.

The executive office said a process was already underway to appoint a designate chairperson of the inquiry.