Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) supports the demands of residential school survivors who began a hunger strike outside the Dáil on Monday 22 September. The survivors are campaigning for the HAA medical card and contributory pensions to be provided to those who suffered institutional abuse including child labour. 

We agree with survivors and the independent Special Advocate for Survivors, Patricia Carey, that the Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Act 2025 is not fit for purpose. The 2025 Act gives survivors little more than the regular medical card, leaving many without the essential health, housing and social care services they need to survive and to avoid re-institutionalisation in their older years. 

JFMR has always been clear: the denial to institutional abuse survivors of the HAA medical card is an intolerable injustice. The HAA card was created in 1996 for those infected by the State with Hepatitis C; it provides an extensive suite of private health and social care supports including home help, and it is implemented by Liaison Officers who organise these services.

The HAA medical card was Judge John Quirke’s explicit, primary recommendation for Magdalene survivors in 2013. Yet, the Government insisted at that time on providing a so-called ‘enhanced medical card’ instead – which is essentially an ordinary medical card.

Hundreds of people affected by adoption, the boarding out system and the Mother and Baby Homes requested the HAA card through the OAK consultation commissioned by the Government in 2021. The HAA card was also a clear recommendation of the Department of Education-commissioned Walshe and O’Connell consultation with residential schools survivors in 2019. Why conduct these consultations, encouraging survivors and affected people to trust enough to voice their concerns, and then ignore what they say?

Contributory state pensions (although, regrettably, not backdated to retirement age but rather to the scheme start date) have been provided to Magdalene Laundries survivors. Given the forced labour that children in residential schools also suffered, to the detriment of their education and as a further form of cruel and inhuman treatment, a clear rationale exists for contributory state pensions to be provided also to these survivors.