On a point of order, I understand some people in the public gallery who are interested in the Bill may have been informed previously that the debate would not take place tonight. For that reason they are late and have missed the beginning of the Minister's speech. Could he begin his speech again for their benefit?
Residential Institutions Redress Bill, 2001: Second Stage.
Minister for Education and Science (Dr. Woods): I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
James Baldwin, a noted American writer on civil rights, wrote, "not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced." Today marks a further step by this House and Irish society to face the dark stain on our society, that is, past abuse of children in institutional care. We do so to help the victims and their families towards recovery and guard against any repetition of such callous abuse of children in care.
The Bill will provide financial awards for people who, as children, suffered abuse in residential institutions for which public bodies had responsibility. It is a Bill about the past, about facing up to mistakes made and providing some reasonable measure of financial recompense for people who were wronged as children.
The Bill is also positive and forward looking. It is about redress. Dictionary definitions of "redress" include reparation or compensation for a wrong, atonement for a misdeed and setting a person upright again. The Bill is part of a range of initiatives taken by the Government to address the issue of child abuse which have all these elements of redress, compensation, atonement for past wrongs and helping people to set themselves up again.
The other Government initiatives include the Laffoy commission to inquire into child abuse, which I established last year under statute. They also include the dedicated counselling services provided by health boards for all victims of abuse and the financial support provided by my Department and the Minister for Health and Children for victim support groups.
It is important that we remember that this legislation is being enacted for some 30,000 people, born since 1930 who were committed by the courts to industrial and reformatory schools. In addition to children committed by the courts, significant numbers were also committed to the industrial and reformatory schools by parents, and the schools often operated as orphanages.
That is not a point of order. Neither do I think it would be appropriate do so as the Deputy asks. Copies of the Minister's speech will be available and I would prefer if we did not introduce such a precedent in the House.
Efforts to brand such children as juvenile criminals are both offensive and inaccurate. The majority of children in the institutions had committed no offence other than to be destitute, orphans or born to parents who simply could not provide for them.
We do not know how many of those placed in the institutions are alive today. We do not know how many of them suffered abuse and carried the scars with them for many years. We do know that the number is significant. There are at least 3,000 people for whom their time in an institution was traumatic. All of these people who, as children, were placed in the institutions have carried the scars of their experience with them, often for a lifetime. From statisitics in my Department on cases pending before the courts we know that 10% of cases relate to children who were in the institutions in the 1930s and 1940s, while 26% relate to children who were in the institutions in the 1950s. These people are now in their sixties and older. It is hardly surprising then that many victims of abuse feel that it has taken Irish society a long time to address their needs or even to listen to them. It has to be said also that in a comparatively short space of time we, as a Government and as a society, have put in place a broader range of measures to address past child abuse than any Government or any society anywhere.
Concern has been expressed by some that the setting up of a scheme for financial redress to victims of abuse in childhood will prejudice the effectiveness of the commission to inquire into child abuse. This is based on the view that former residents of the institutions will be encouraged to make their claim to the redress board only.
I cannot stress strongly enough that the commission and the proposed Residential Institutions Redress Board are separate bodies with very different functions. Both bodies are part of the Government's response to widespread public concern about alleged abuse in the institutions. They are intended as going some way to serving the needs of victims of abuse in childhood. Those needs, as expressed to me and my Department by many former residents of the institutions, include the need to be believed. They also want answers as to the reason abuse happened to them and who were the responsible parties. Their needs also include, in some but by no means all cases, a wish to be financially compensated. I appreciate that the concerns are expressed from a genuine desire to see the Laffoy commission successfully complete its work. I have to say nevertheless that it is unfair to former residents of institutions to presume to know how they will act. As matters stand, the commission has a very substantial number of applications and many have already been heard. There is no evidence, to my knowledge, of a drift of applicants away from the commission.
We also have to have regard to the reality of the lives of many of the former residents of the institutions. Waiting for the outcome of the commission's inquiries, however quickly it can carry them out, would in all likelihood mean waiting a couple of years before moving to address the issue of compensation. In that time there is no doubt, but that some former residents of institutions would die or become infirm. Others with claims for compensation would be forced to bring their claims through the courts with all the attendant stress of that process. It has taken us, as a society, long enough to recognise the serious injustices which our residential care institutions harboured. We should delay no longer in addressing the needs of people who, as children, were placed in these institutions.
The compensation provided for in the Bill is through an ex gratia scheme. It involves no finding of fault and no declaration of liability. It is a scheme designed to address the fact that the institutions concerned in many ways departed from the normal requirements of child care while in custody. It acknowledges that because of this many people who were in institutional care have, through much of their lives, carried serious psychological scars. The scheme seeks to provide reasonable financial compensation for that injury. This approach has caused concern that awards will be made on the basis of untested evidence. This is not the case. Any person before the redress board must first establish that he or she is suffering or has suffered some significant injury, physical or psychological. Second, he or she must establish that the injury is consistent with the abuse as alleged. Both will involve sigificant medical and psychiatric evidence and the board may have assessments carried out.
It is not proposed to inquire in detail into the facts of abuse as alleged for a number of reasons. There will be the medically proven fact that claimants to the redress board have suffered damage consistent with abuse in childhood. It has to be borne in mind that these are people for whom, as children, public authorities had special responsibilities. Even if rigorous inquiries were to be made into allegations of abuse it is likely that a significant number of cases would be reduced to an adjudication between conflicting accounts with no objective proof of either. Are such people to be denied compensation for injuries which are objectively verifiable? Such an approach would visit an injustice upon those who were genuinely abused in childhood and serve only to heighten their sense of continuing abuse.
There is a very real concern among the religious orders, which were the owners and managers of the institutions, that the scheme we are debating today amounts to a significant injustice to them. As they perceive it, the injustice lies in the fact that the validation process, the practice which I have just outlined, will operate so as to associate all members who worked in the institutions in the past with abuse. This, they fear, will bring disrepute even to the members of the congregations today and it will all occur without giving the individuals concerned or the congregations an opportunity to defend themselves. I am very conscious of these concerns and wish strongly to allay their fears as far as possible.
I have already outlined why I consider the process for validating claims is reasonable in the circumstances and how the compensation scheme focuses not on the facts of abuse, but on current or past injury which is consistent with abuse. I am aware that in the ongoing debate about past child abuse it has been all too easy to characterise the congregations who managed the institutions as the villains. This is an injustice to the individual members of the congregations, both past and present, and does no service to the task we have set ourselves, that of facing up, as a society, to the mistakes of our past.
While a complete account of institutional child abuse must await the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, we know that almost 30,000 people born since 1930 passed through the reformatory and industrial schools as children. Most of these were resident in the institutions for periods up to the end of the 1960s. Following the report of the committee on reformatory and industrial schools, chaired by Ms Justice Eileen Kennedy in 1970, most of the schools were closed.
These schools have a long history. Their origins demonstrate the long policy and practice of neglect of children. Into that policy of official neglect stepped the religious congregations and other charitable organisations. Ever since the first industrial and reformatory schools were introduced to Ireland in the 1860s, religious congregations, Catholic and Protestant, undertook the difficult and largely unrewarded work of providing for children who suffered multiple disadvantages. Local and central government was only too happy to delegate this duty to them.
Over time the situation improved, especially after the enactment in 1908 of the Children Act. However, as late as 1970 the Kennedy Committee found that the industrial and reformatory schools were housed in old and often unsuitable build ings, the institutions were under staffed by under trained or untrained personnel, the emotional needs of the children were not catered for even though they came from backgrounds of deprivation, an institutional approach prevailed, and financial provision made by public bodies was inadequate as was the system of inspection.
This litany of deficiencies was as much the fault of contemporary Irish society and its leaders, as it was the fault of managers of the schools who, in many cases, were making do with the few resources they got. Should it surprise us then that many children suffered emotional neglect, were hungry and poorly clothed, that corporal punishment was frequent and that the regime in most of the institutions could best be described as harsh.
There is a need for balance and fairness in public debate on this very important subject. Religious congregations have made a significant contribution to Irish society, not least in the education of children. That we should allow that contribution and their contribution generally to the care and welfare of the most vulnerable in our society to be engulfed by the proper revulsion at institutional abuse is merely to seek to cure one injustice by creating another.
None of this absolves those who abused children, or their managers and employers, of responsibility for the enormous damage done to young lives. Abuse of children in institutional care occurred and the State, together with the congregations concerned, is trying to find a reasonable response to it. The congregations are engaged in discussions with representatives of the State to seek a way in which they can make a contribution to this compensation scheme. I welcome the congregation's preparedness to engage in these discussions and trust they will be concluded successfully at an early date. Their involvement with the scheme represents the best option for providing a full response to past abuse and bringing this painful period in our history to a close.
As published, the Bill applies to people who as children suffered abuse in orphanages, industrial schools and reformatory schools. It does not include victims of abuse in day schools. The decision to set up this compensation scheme as now proposed was taken after careful consideration of all the circumstances. The scheme is intended to address a very particular circumstance, namely, abuse in residential care. It is not, and was never intended to be, a panacea for every injustice committed on children.
In May 1999 the Taoiseach, responding to the emerging accounts of abuse in residential care, expressed regret on behalf of our society for our collective failure to intervene, detect the pain of the victims of abuse and come to their rescue. He did so because most allegations and the most disturbing allegations have been made about these institutions and because public authorities had formal and, in most cases, statutory responsibility, both for the placing of the children in the institutions and the regulation of the operation of the institutions. To a significant degree the State, through these public bodies, replaced parents as the natural protector and career of the children concerned. This placed a heavy responsibility on public bodies for their welfare. A similar responsibility did not apply in the case of children who attended ordinary schools and for the most part continued to live in their homes and communities.
The nature of the institutions is also relevant to the decision to pay compensation from public funds to former residents. Unlike ordinary schools, the institutions removed the barriers which normally separate work, play and sleep and controlled every aspect of the child's life. Residents had little or no say in their lives. In the words of the Kennedy committee, "The children in care are completely dependent on the residential home staff for all the love, understanding, security and religious formation they need, as well as for support in making their way in life".
Given the weakness and vulnerability of a child who has been deprived of parental care in such circumstances, the authorities mandated in law to protect his or her interests have a particularly onerous responsibility. Failure on their part 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 in respect of schools which were privately owned and significantly independent. In the circumstances, the distinction now being made in the provision of financial redress, and in that matter only, between abuse victims in ordinary schools and victims in residential care institutions, is a reasonable one.
In the Government's initiatives to address past abuse, the needs of those who suffered abuse in ordinary schools is recognised and provided for and a range of measures has been put in place to assist them. These include the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, dedicated counselling services in all health board areas for victims of abuse and the recent amendment to the Statute of Limitations. The latter initiative was taken keeping in mind the particular position of the victims of a convicted child abuser, who was a teacher in an ordinary school, and facilitated them in seeking financial redress in the courts.
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 people who were abused in childhood. The commission process is open to all persons who suffered abuse in childhood, except where the abuse occurred in a family home. The commission, in its conclusions, may have views on how the effects of abuse in ordinary schools can be dealt with.
Debate adjourned.