Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes are being “retraumatised” by the prospect of losing benefits in the UK if they accept compensation from the Irish state, Westminster has been told
Benefits are for those without a pile of cash. If you’ve got a pile of cash you don;t get benefits. And?
Ireland has begun the process of confronting one of the most painful chapters in its history by offering compensation to thousands of unmarried mothers who were shunned by society and hidden away in the church-run mother and baby homes.
However, up to 13,000 of those survivors who are living in Britain risk losing access to essential means-tested benefits if they accept the compensation, which can range from €5,000 to €125,000 (£4,230 to £105,000) depending on the length of time people were resident.
“Sadly, for thousands of survivors in Britain, what was meant to be a token of acknowledgment and apology from the Irish government has instead become an additional burden,” the letter states.
Bugger off.
“shunned by society and hidden away in the church-run mother and baby homes.”
Unpleasant but why is the Irish taxpayer on the hook for it? And when was this? Why didn’t they just enter the UK and bludge off our welfare state? That’s what it’s for isn’t it: furriners?
“survivors”? Like Holocaust survivors, you mean? Like the old girl who was nastily burnt in Boulder by the mad Egyptian? She was a “holocaust survivor”, purportedly. Except that by 1940 she was safely in Lisbon. The Holocaust started in 1941.
It’s striking how people will cheapen just anything if they see advantage to it. Incentives, eh?
Surely if they don’t like UK law, they can just go back to Ireland??
How the fuck have we managed to get saddled with 13,000 of them? I mean, Irish women who have been in a ‘mother and baby home’ is a pretty small subset of the overall Irish population, so how many Irish moochers are we paying for? Along with all the other useless grifters who infest the nation.
Interesting. Here in an otherwise increasingly fucked up country, any pile of cash you have by way of compensation for having been previously fucked over by the state is not included in the means test for any means-tested benefits. Which feels somehow correct.
dearieme, she seems to be reasonably describable as a holocaust survivor by having taken action to avoid it that she wouldn’t have taken otherwise. Sure the holocaust only got going in 1941 but it became increasingly difficult to be Jewish in Germany long before then. By 1936 it was pretty clear which direction things were going for anyone that stayed. Obviously “concentration camp survivor” is a smaller subset of holocaust survivors, by this definition.
“Ireland has begun the process of confronting one of the most painful chapters in its history by offering compensation to thousands of unmarried mothers who were shunned by society and hidden away in the church-run mother and baby homes.”
What was the better alternative at the time? There wasn’t one. The economics of raising kids were different. The wealth of Ireland couldn’t pay for a load of women to live on benefits back then.
The application of social pressure on the fathers to marry the mothers? As was basically standard across the whole of Britain for centuries, right up until that time?
Some old relative did my family tree back to the 1600s once. Before 1900 no one was married more than 9 months before the delivery of their first child.
Why is it when something bad happens to me, the most sympathy I can expect is “Chin up lad, have a pint and deal with it in the morning”.
When bad shit happens to other people, I am expected to go out of my way to have sympathy and to help them.
It’s a good thing Ireland is awash in tax monies* so we can afford this largesse (see also “asylum seekers”). It’s part of our psyche, the Irish are never to blame for anything. It was the English until the 1920’s, then it was the fault of the Church, now it’s the EU (although increasingly, the Jews).
That Irish society went along wholesale with all this is ignore. The big boys made me do it.
*Until the money runs out .
What part of “means-tested” does the Grauniad not understand?
Means testing to Leftists is denying money to the “rich” (e.g. pensioners with over £35k of annual income).
It’s not to be applied to clients of the state who’s votes you are buying.
I’m afraid I agree with BiG. If you’ve been compensated for having been fucked over by the state, then including that compensation in a means test is essentially the state clawing it back again. They can fuck off.
Whether these particular bog-hoppers should have been compensated in the first place is another matter. As WB says, what was the alternative in Ireland at the time? Under the FTA these wimmin could have got the ferry to Liverpool or Glasgow, both of which it seems were expressly built to house the Irish, and then, as dearieme points out, bludged off us indefinitely.
I do not agree with BiG and Norman. Ireland is the state compensating the women. The benefits are from the UK. Two different countries. If the UK was paying the compensation, then it would be OK to exclude it from the benefits assessment.
Surely most of these women are pensioners now, or were these homes still going less than 50 years ago?
‘a token of acknowledgment and apology’
. . . with other people’s money. The beneficiary of this largesse is preening Irish politicians.
Great sport, spending other people’s money to show how much YOU care.
In this case they were fucked over by a foreign state. So means testing here should indeed apply and they (the scroungers) can fuck off.
And, why are we still giving the paddies special privileges in the UK? Partition was more than a hundred years ago. Fair enough to extend the privilege to anyone that was a British citizen at the time it happened, but any born since then can also fuck off.
BiW, agreed. I’d missed the “compo was foreign” part. Bog-trotting cultural primitivism is not our problem. Also, the FTA can fuck off, too. Got a British passport on the island of Ireland? You can come here. You haven’t? Fuck off and join the queue with the other continentals. This has nothing to do with Irish domestic borders.
Church run mother and baby homes.
Translation: charitable institution provides a roof for the unfortunate or feckless.
Unless they were pimped out or worked as slaves this sounds like the best that could be afforded at the time.
The alternative was likely infanticide and/or prostitution.
Paddies in England as English in Paddistan are essentially not treated as foreigners.
Good luck undoing that without causing various other, larger problems.
“she seems to be reasonably describable as a holocaust survivor by having taken action to avoid it that she wouldn’t have taken otherwise.” If I may say so, balls. “Holocaust evader” if you like, but to use “survivor” is to cheapen the term. Like all those arseholes who claim to be wage slaves, as if it bears any fucking resemblance to slavery.
The holocaust started in 1941. If you weren’t living in land controlled by Germany then or thereafter you didn’t “survive” the holocaust, you were simply alive at the time it happened. Hell’s bells by 1941 she was in the Dominican Republic – not even on the same continent as the Germans.
In her case “it became increasingly difficult to be Jewish in Germany” is completely irrelevant because her family didn’t live in Germany. And anyway there wasn’t mass killing of German Jews until 1941: before the war the Nazi policy was to get them out of Germany while looting them of as much money as possible – nasty but not a holocaust.
“Bugger off” is far, far too polite, Tim!
Maybe go and claim benefits in Ireland?
Why do we allow net-non-contributing foreign citizens to live here at all? Ass, cash or grass or GTFO. We don’t need more mouths to feed.
Philip – The alternative was likely infanticide and/or prostitution.
Indeed. These things are always magnified in an optical bubble – i.e. however lousy the contemporary institutions were, they never consider how shit the rest of society was as well.
It’s why “mass graves” (i.e. perfectly normal graveyards built by good people whose only sin was being incredibly poor by our standards and not having modern sanitation or medicine or pesticides) keep being found in Canada and other places in need of a struggle session. Historical truth don’t matter when you can have a good screaming sesh. The Canadian media ginned up the first anti-Christian pogrom I’ve seen in my lifetime, outside places like Nigeria. Another memory-holed recent event in the West, such a forgetful civilisation.
As you say, the alternatives to horrible care homes / nuns / priests was starvation or being pimped by a Dickens baddie. The olden days was horrible, it’s why we like the enlightened men who abolished slavery and stopped children being sold to the experiments. Ireland is a particularly lachrymose vale of tears because post-independence Ireland was a poor and deeply dysfunctional society full of frustrated, bitter, and emotionally scarred people with big fat sad Irish heads like transporter chief Miles O’Brien. I say “was”, because they’re no longer poor
WB – What was the better alternative at the time? There wasn’t one. The economics of raising kids were different. The wealth of Ireland couldn’t pay for a load of women to live on benefits back then.
Yarp, no fatties in the Potato Famine. But consider that, in coulrowelt, “confronting history” usually means a struggle session where the squares are informed some random shit that happened before they were born is their fault, somehow. Also, gimme £££
*welfare* benefits are just that, they’re to provide a minimum standard of welfare. If you come in to money by other means and don’t need more money to meet those standards they should be stopped or reduced to meet the minimum standard.
The state should be disinterested when providing welfare benefits and just apply the rules to one and all and not have special categories of people who can, say,
afford to run a big flashy car or go expensive foreign holidays and still receive *welfare* benefits.