The Residential Institutions Redress Board was established under statute in 2002 to provide financial redress to victims of child abuse in residential institutions in order to assist them in their recovery and enhance the quality of the remainder of their lives.
Expenditure associated with the redress board to the end of 2006 was approximately €564 million. At that time, 7,290 applications out of a total of 14,540 received were processed by the board. The average award to date is approximately €70,000 with awards ranging up to €300,000. At this point it is estimated that a provision of another €600 million may be required to meet the remaining award, administration and legal costs of the board. This would bring the total cost of the scheme to an estimated €1.16 billion. I should emphasise, however, that this revised estimate, like earlier estimates, is tentative as the board had some 7,250 outstanding applications to process at the end of 2006 and the level of award in these remaining cases may vary substantially. The final cost of the scheme will not be known until the board has completed its work, which may take up to a further three years.
The previous estimate of up to €1.3 billion for the total cost of the scheme, which was included in the 2005 appropriation accounts, was based on the number of applications received by the December 2005 deadline, an average award of €76,000 at end 2005, and legal and administration costs of approximately 20%. The average award has fallen to €70,000 since then, but there is no guarantee that this will continue.
The Comptroller and Auditor General has stated that any estimate of the ultimate liability arising from the redress scheme is based on assumptions which are impossible to validate and should therefore be treated in a cautionary way. While earlier estimates of the cost of the scheme, made by my Department, were lower than the current estimate, the scheme is without precedent and nobody could have predicted with certainty how many applications there would be.
Of course, the final cost of the redress scheme must be viewed in the context of the Government's acceptance of its responsibilities in apologising to victims of abuse and the substantial costs that would have been incurred had no such scheme been established, with cases processed in the normal manner through the courts. The scheme enables victims to obtain compensation for their injuries without having to face the trauma of pursuing their cases in court.
In establishing the scheme, the Government considered it was the just and humane thing to do as the State was responsible for children that were placed in institutions by the courts and other public bodies.