Ms Mary Higgins:

We organise a number of outreach events every year. We hold a monthly clinic with interpreting services in Dublin for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and offer online face-to-face assessments to them through the Irish Remote Interpreting Service. We protect and promote the confidentiality of survivors in contact with us and do not discuss individual applications without the written permission of the applicant. We receive value feedback from applicants and other stakeholders. We actively seek it through informal conversations, formal feedback mechanisms and our complaints procedure. We use feedback to review and improve our services and processes. Applicants can also avail of the independently established process to appeal decisions made by Caranua.

Engagement in consultation has continued to be a cornerstone of our approach and we work closely with survivor support groups such as the Aislinn Education and Support Centre, SOCA UK, Right of Place, the Alliance Victim Support Group, Whispering Hope, Irish welfare services in the United Kingdom and the dedicated survivor counselling services that were referred to earlier.

The length of time it takes to assess, process and complete an application varies according to the needs and circumstances of each applicant and can span a number of months and involve an average of about 30 telephone calls for each one, in addition to other written communication. We opened for applications in January 2014 and, to the end of March this year, over 5,000 individuals were eligible to apply to us. A total of 4,362 had actually applied for services, 4,000 to the point of payment. We have spent over €56 million of the fund on services for survivors.

The average number of payments each applicant receives is eight. The average value of a payment received by an applicant is €13,000. That is an average figure for a large number obviously and there are outliers within it.