Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 13 February 2014
114. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Education and Skills the reason the Linden Home in Blackrock was excluded from the residential institutions redress scheme; and the steps that are open to former residents to obtain redress. [7365/14]
View answerThe Schedule to the Residential Institutions Redress Act, 2002 included 123 specified institutions and section 4 of the Act enabled the Minister for Education and Science to provide for the insertion into the Schedule of "any industrial school, reformatory school, orphanage, children's home, special school which was established for the purpose of providing education services to children with a physical or intellectual disability or a hospital providing medical or psychiatric services to people with a physical or mental disability or mental illness in which children were placed and resident and in respect of which a public body had a regulatory or inspection function." Two Orders were made specifying 16 additional institutions, in November 2004 and July 2005, bringing the total number of scheduled institutions to 139. Since then, no further institutions have been added to the Schedule. Following the publication of the Ryan Report in May 2009, there were a range of demands for the redress scheme to be extended, including demands to include specific institutions and categories of institutions. However, the Government of the time decided against the inclusion of any further institutions within the scheme. The decision not to extend the scheme has meant the exclusion of a range of institutions which could have been considered for inclusion. The closing date for receipt of applications by the Redress Board was 15th December, 2005. The Board could however accept late applications in exceptional circumstances, up until September 2011. The Board is currently finalising the remaining applications it received. I understand that requests to include Linden Convalescent Home in the Schedule were considered by my Department and refused on the basis that the Home did not come within the terms of section 4.
