The State Claims Agency (SCA) is mandated on behalf of the State to deal with cases of alleged sex abuse in schools. I have asked that the SCA collate the data and I will then write directly to the Deputy with the information.
The following deferred reply was received under Standing Order 42A
The SCA first became involved in the management of Day School abuse claims following the signing of the Delegation Order entitled National Treasury Management Agency (Delegation of Claims Management Functions) Order 2005. The Day School abuse claims arise from sexual and/or physical and/or psychological abuse and all categories of abuse claims are included in the figures. There were some Day School abuse claims managed directly by my Department in conjunction with the Chief State Solicitor's Office prior to the transfer of responsibilities.
Total claims comprise all litigated and non-litigated claims. A non-litigated claims is one in which no legal proceedings were issued and served naming the Minister/Department as a Defendant.
In response to your specific queries I can confirm in respect of litigated claims:
- A total of 353 claims arising from sexual and/or physical and/or psychological abuse in Day Schools have been received by the SCA
- 109 claims remain open and on-going before the Courts and 197 claims were discontinued. In the majority of the 197 discontinued claims, the Plaintiffs served Notices of Discontinuance
- None of the 353 claims were found to be statute barred and none were dismissed on the basis of the Plaintiff having signed a waiver
- None of the 353 claims were upheld by the Courts
- 3 cases proceeded to a full hearing in the Courts and in all 3 the Courts held that the Minister/Department had no liability
- My Department did not pursue any plaintiffs for legal costs and no awards of costs were made to my Department.
- The expenditure on legal fees by the State Claims Agency on behalf of the Minister/Department was €1,430,715 in Defence legal costs, €301,682 in Plaintiffs' legal costs giving a total of €1,732,397.
In respect of total claims I can confirm the following:
- A total of 479 Day School abuse claims were received including 126 non-litigated claims.
- Of these 479 claims, 329 have been finalised while 150 remain open/ongoing
- Damages payments in settlement of the claims against the Minister/Department were made in 21 claims.
- In relation to these 21 cases, it should be noted that the SCA made a total of 16 settlement payments. Of the remaining 5 settlement payments, 3 were paid by the Department as the settlements were negotiated prior to those claims being transferred to the SCA for management in 2005. The remaining 2 settlements were paid in full by the relevant Congregation and the amounts due from the State to the Congregation under a negotiated sharing agreement were offset against monies then due to the State from the Congregation on other claims that were the subject of the sharing agreement.
