Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

As stated by other speakers, the scandal of thousands of children being abused in church-run institutions, which children the State failed for decades to protect, is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, shames of this State's relatively short history. Many heinous crimes were perpetrated against thousands of children. We must, in trying to deal with this issue, ensure we do everything in our power to provide whatever redress, support and compensation we can to those people whose lives were ruined. Nothing we or this Bill can do can ever fully compensate people for the suffering they endured. In so far as we have a duty and obligation to help victims of abuse and their families to cope for the rest of their lives with the consequences of the crimes committed against them, we must ensure we do so as well as we possibly can. It is of the utmost importance that nothing we do results in further stress, difficulty, anxiety, humiliation or suffering for people who have already suffered far too much. We must in the first instance listen to their view on how we can address the issues affecting them. Whatever we then put in place must result in no further trauma, suffering or stress for them and their families. It is vital we get this right.

The church, whose role in visiting this suffering on so many people, must end its shameful foot-dragging and instinct for self-preservation and self-protection whether of the institution of the church or of particular individuals within it who believe their self-preservation is of greater priority than are the victims of this terrible abuse, their concerns and needs. In this regard, it is disgraceful that the church has still not put up all of the money to meet its obligations on this matter. As far as I am concerned, the State has a responsibility to force it to do so and to seize its assets if required. Whatever needs to be done should be done to ensure the church comes up with the funds and supports required. The institution and individuals within it matter not a whit compared to our obligation to the victims of child abuse. To my mind it is equally shameful - this is out of our power - that Cardinal Brady, given his failure to discharge his responsibility to the victims of Fr. Brendan Smyth, will not resign.

In so far as we in this House have the authority to do something for the victims, we must ensure we get this right and, critically, with an ear to what the victims and their families say they need. I do not pretend to be an expert on this issue. I met this morning, as I have done on other occasions, with two victims representing other victims who have major concerns about this Bill. When I asked them at the end of the meeting if they believed this Bill as currently drafted should be scrapped, they said it should because it does not deal as it should with the issue.

As regards eligibility, there should be no question of limiting eligibility to those given awards from the Residential Institutions Redress Board. Anyone who was a victim or resident in one of the relevant institutions should be eligible to access this fund and services provided therefrom. As stated by Deputy Joan Collins, the victims' organisations raised with us their fear that significant resources that should be going to help victims will be squandered on administration, salaries, expenses and so on.

That must not happen. They propose a much simpler system where we do not need large boards, a large staff and so on and that we just give the money directly to the people who are eligible for it in the form of some sort of universal credit card, as Deputy Collins said. We could work out the proportion of the available fund to be given to each individual on the basis of much of the information we already have from awards given by the Residential Institutions Redress Board. This could be done and it would save on the necessity for administration and would not waste funds which should be going to the victims.

They also expressed deep concern that we are just talking about transferring over the administration and infrastructure from the Education Finance Board because they reported real problems with, as has been described, people spending months trying to gain access to this fund but giving up such was the onerous nature of the process and the difficulty of making an application with all the documentation, proof and so on that they had to provide. People literally gave up. That cannot happen. What they propose is a much simpler system where we simply give them the resources in the form of a universal credit card, so we do not have to deal with all of that.

The key point for them is that the State already has most of the information it needs to adequately disburse the resources, supports and funds via the Residential Institutions Redress Board and the awards. Anybody who came in after that could be looked at. They also stressed the need for it to be independent. In so far as any administration of this is required, it must be completely independent but there is a problem if the Minister is appointing the chief executive. There may be a conflict or a tension in regard to a Government which has concerns about cutting back on services while at the same time having an influence on a board whose priority should be not a concern about the Government's concerns about services but about what the victims and their families need and providing for that. It should be separate from the Government and the Minister and completely independent and funding should be provided in a much more simplified form and in a much more direct way than this Bill proposes.

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