Disabled kept waiting for €1m Magdalene payments

By Ellen Coyne
Times
July 10, 2017

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/disabled-kept-waiting-for-1m-magdalene-payments-kd80h5lzg

Charlie Flanagan has said payouts to the women must be properly handled Photo by LEAH FARRELL

Disabled women who survived the Magdalene laundries could lose out on compensation because the government is stalling on enacting the legislation needed to pay them.

Charlie Flanagan, the justice minister, has said that legislation supporting a scheme for people with intellectual disabilities cannot be fully enacted this year because the person responsible for supervising it not yet been hired. Activists have warned that some of the women may die before they are compensated for the abuse they endured.

Nineteen of the most vulnerable Magdalene laundry survivors are being denied more than €1 million of compensation. The group includes nine women who spent more than a decade in the institutions and are entitled to the maximum €100,000 under the state’s restorative scheme.

The women have not been paid because the government has decided that they do not have the capacity to understand the scheme or the documents they must sign to make a claim.

The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, which was signed last year, would give them access to independent decision-makers appointed to protect their payments. It is being phased in but there is no timeline for it to be fully implemented.