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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 6 Nov 2001

Vol. 543 No. 2

Written Answers. - Child Abuse.

Jim Higgins

Ceist:

791 Mr. Higgins (Mayo) asked the Minister for Education and Science if a decision has been taken to award compensation only to children sexually abused in residential institutions and not to award compensation to children abused in day schools. [26343/01]

The Residential Institutions Redress Bill provides for a scheme of compensation in very particular circumstances. It applies to orphanages, industrial schools and reformatory schools. It is on these institutions that for most of the past three years attention has been focused because most allegations, and the most disturbing allegations, have been made about conditions in them up to the late 1960s. In addition, there is also the case that the Irish State generally and public institutions, in particular, carried a significant share of the responsibility, at least for a failure to detect abuse and to act. In the case of residential institutions of the kind referred to, publicly funded authorities had formal, and in most cases statutory responsibility, both for the placing of the children in the institutions and in regulating all aspects of the operation of the institutions. The State, through these public bodies, to a significant degree, replaced parents as the natural protector and care giver of the children concerned. This conferred on the State a special legal and moral responsibility for the welfare of those children. A similar responsibility did not apply in the case of children who continued to live in their homes and community.

The nature of the industrial schools, orphanages and other such institutions is also relevant to the decision to pay compensation from public funds to former residents of these. Unlike ordinary schools where children returned to the protection of their families, the institutions concerned had complete control over all aspects of the children's lives. Given the weakness and vulnerability of a child who has been deprived of parental care in such a situation, the authorities mandated in law to protect his or her interests have a particularly onerous responsibility. Failure on the part of those authorities can carry serious consequences for the children who have no other advocate. In the case of ordinary schools, public authorities did not have this level of responsibility and had no authority to exercise it.
This is not to say that abuse of any child, wherever it occurred, is not to be equally abhorred and the victims of such crimes should be assisted to recovery. For that reason the general range of initiatives taken by the Government in the past two years apply to all victims of abuse, wherever it occurred, other than family homes in the case of the commission. These include the setting up of the commission to inquire into child abuse, dedicated counselling services in all health board areas for victims of abuse and amendment to the Statute of Limitations. The change in the statute enabled victims of abuse to seek financial redress in the courts. The overall aim of these measures has been to assist those who still suffer from the trauma of abuse in childhood to recover, to establish responsibility for past abuse and to find better ways to safeguard children for the future.
Finally, one of the functions laid down in the commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000, requires the commission to advise the Government on the actions that may be taken to alleviate the damage suffered by persons who were abused in childhood. The Commission process is open to all people who suffered abuse in childhood, except where the abuse occurred in a family home.
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