Eligibility Criteria

People who spent time as mothers or as children in one of the listed Mother and Baby or County Home InstitutionsMother and Baby or County Home Institutions may be eligible for benefits under the Payment Scheme.

There are three benefits available under the Payment Scheme:

a. a general payment;

b. a work-related payment; and

c. health supports.

The level of the financial payment will depend on the amount of time spent in one of the institutions. Further information on the payment rates for general and work-related payments is available here.

The health supports will be either:

• an enhanced medical card; or

• for people living outside of Ireland only, a health support payment valued at €3,000, instead of the enhanced medical card.

Further information on the eligibility criteria for each is available on the Eligibility Criteria.

This Scheme covers the Mother and Baby Institutions investigated by the Commission of Investigation and 29 County Home Institutions. The full list, as set out in the legislation, is outlined on theInstitutions covered by the Payment Schemepage.

Each scheduled institution has a concluding year. Applications to the scheme are only eligible if the person entered the institution they applied for on or before 31 December of the concluding year.

For a small number of institutions covered by the Payment Scheme, the concluding year is set at 31 December 1998. This is aligned with the end of the timeframe for the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes which was 1922 to 1998. For the majority of institutions under the Payment Scheme, the concluding year is set at an earlier time. This represents the last year where it is understood, based on the information available, the scheduled institutions were operating as mother and baby or county homes i.e. the institution was providing sheltered and supervised ante and post-natal facilities to single mothers and their children.

The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023 provides that the Minister - with the consent of the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform - can amend the concluding year for an institution if information becomes available to indicate that the concluding year set out in the Act is not correct.

On 12th September 2024 the concluding year for four county home institutions were amended by the Minister by regulation as follows:

Wexford (Enniscorthy) County Home from 1936 to 1962

Clare (Ennis) County Home from 1952 to 1958

Mayo (Castlebar) County Home from 1938 to1960 and

South Tipperary (Cashel) County Home from 1955 to 1960

There are three circumstances where an application to the Payment Scheme may be deemed ineligible:

1. Where you apply for an institution that is not a scheduled institution i.e. it is not listed in Schedule 1 of the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023.

2. Where the application is made for a person who died before 13th January 2021, the date of the State apology to survivors and former residents.

3. Where the application is in respect of a period of time after 31st December of the concluding year for the institution applied for.

In these cases, you will receive a letter to inform you that your application to the Payment Scheme is ineligible and you will not receive a Item was unpublished or removed This decision is final and there is no access to the review or appeal process. The reason for this is that the Chief Deciding Officer must act in accordance with the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023 and has no discretion to allow such an application to proceed. Therefore, any request for a review could not be successful.

In the event a previously ineligible institution is added to the Schedule by the Minister, you will be entitled to make a further application to the Payment Scheme for this institution.

If a concluding year is amended and your previous application becomes eligible, we will contact you about this.

Yes, it is possible for the personal representative of a deceased relevant person to make applications for a financial payment where the person died on or after the date of An Taoiseach’s apology to survivors on 13 January 2021.

Further information on estate applications is available here.