Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 24 June 2021
314. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Education the funding allocated to the Caranua Residential Institutions Statutory Fund; the number of applications approved and paid to date; the average payment; the number of in progress applications; the number of applications that are ineligible; the number of applications appealed; the number of applications awaiting probate; and the number of applications withdrawn in tabular form. [34226/21]
View answer315. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Education the funding allocated to the Caranua Residential Institutions Statutory Fund for administrative purposes including staffing, legal and premises costs. [34227/21]
View answer316. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Education the other supports outside of the Caranua Residential Institutions Statutory Fund redress scheme that have been put in place to assist the former residents of the institutions including the overall spend on health, housing, educational and counselling services; and the initial allocation and final spend, respectively in tabular form. [34228/21]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 314 to 316, inclusive, together.
Caranua was established in 2013 with a specific purpose, which was provided for in the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Board Act 2012 – to disburse the contributions provided by the religious congregations following the publication of the Ryan Report in 2009, by funding approved services to support the needs of former residents who, as children, suffered abuse in relevant institutions. As is specified in the 2012 Act, the amount of €110m, plus interest of €1.38m, was made available to Caranua, and held in a Statutory Fund managed by the NTMA.
To be eligible to apply to Caranua, applicants had to have been in receipt of an award of redress from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme, or to have qualified for such an award had they not already received similar awards or settlements in court proceedings.
Given the finite nature of the funding available, Caranua announced in May 2018 that it would cease to accept applications from 1 August 2018. After that date, it mainly focussed on processing
applications on hand. It also undertook targeted outreach to certain groups, including survivors who were in prison.
As part of this process, Caranua engaged extensively with applicants who had not completed the application process, and established person-centred timelines for the provision of supporting documentation which would enable their applications to be progressed before Caranua was required to wind-down its operations. As the Deputy will appreciate, given the impending exhaustion of the funding available to it Caranua was not in a position to allow applications to remain open indefinitely.
Caranua finalised all outstanding applications and made all final payments in early December 2020, with the exception of a very limited number of cases which were referred back to Caranua on appeal, or where it had agreed to make staggered payments.
The specific details on applications requested by the Deputy are set out in the table below. These are, in the main, drawn from information published on Caranua’s website, www.caranua.ie.
|
Number of applications approved and paid |
57,161 |
|
Average payment |
Approximately €1,700 |
|
Number of in progress applications |
Nil |
|
Number of ineligible applications* |
5,009 |
|
Number of applications appealed |
761 |
|
Number of applications awaiting probate |
Nil |
|
Number of applications withdrawn |
3,062 |
Overall, Caranua received over 62,000 applications for funding supports from over 6,000 eligible survivors. Caranua made over 57,000 payments to survivors, totalling almost €98 million, and each applicant received an average of over €15,000 in supports. It is not possible to give an exact figure for the number of ineligible applications, but 3,062 applications were withdrawn, while a further 1,947 applications were not approved by Caranua, a total of 5,009 applications. In addition, approximately 200 individuals who applied to Caranua were determined to be ineligible for support.
With regard to appeals, section 22 of the 2012 Act provides that a decision by Caranua to not approve an application could be appealed to an Independent Appeals Officer. In total of 761 appeals were submitted to the Independent Appeals Officer. All outstanding appeals were finalised by the Independent Appeals Officer in February 2021.
With regard to administrative costs, the 2012 Act provided that all expenditure arising from Caranua’s operations must be met from the funding held in the Statutory Fund. There is no provision in the Act for Exchequer funding to be utilised to fund either supports for survivors, or the administrative costs arising.
Caranua’s audited financial statements to the end of 2020 show payments to survivors of approximately €97.8 million, while overall administrative costs had come to approximately €13.5 million. This compares favourably with comparable organisations such as Northern Ireland’s Victims and Survivors Service, which provides funding supports to those effected by the Troubles.
With regard to other supports available to survivors, the National Counselling Service, run by the HSE, is a free nationwide service, which provides face-to-face, phone, and video counselling. It provides a specific, trauma-informed, service for adults who experienced childhood abuse and neglect. This service is available to all survivors of institutional abuse.
Since 2019, the Department has engaged extensively with former residents in a Consultation Forum facilitated by external facilitators. This process led to the publication in August 2019 of “Consultations with Survivors of Institutional Abuse on Themes and Issues to be addressed by a Survivor Led Consultation Group” and a further phase of consultations which are ongoing.
The meetings are facilitated by professionally qualified facilitators who are funded by my Department. Matters relating to survivors of institutional abuse identified by survivors, and which are set out in the August 2019 report, continue to be discussed by the Group. I met with the Group in December 2020 to hear about the various issues which had been identified by the Group.
It is expected this consultation process will be concluded shortly. Their findings will be further considered by the inter-departmental group and their conclusions will inform the consideration of proposals to Government in this context.
