Ms Mary Higgins:

Members will have to excuse my voice, which may not last for the full meeting. I thank the Chairman and members for the invitation to discuss the work of Caranua and make an opening statement. I am joined by our chairman, Mr. David O'Callaghan. Unfortunately, our director of finance, who was due to attend, is unwell. We are delighted to have an opportunity to engage with the committee. As the Chairman noted, we have written to the committee and kept it informed through the submission of annual reports. We have done this because we work in a way that is open, transparent and accountable to all stakeholders and we want to be open and accountable. Caranua responds to queries from Members of the Oireachtas related to individual applications and our general operations and regularly publishes on its website information on board meetings and all other activities. As such, we practise what we preach in terms of transparency.

Given its purpose of managing a fund for the benefit of some survivors of institutional abuse, Caranua may seem like an unusual fit with the committee and indeed with the Department of Education and Skills. Its location here arises from the historical oversight role the Department has had in the funding, management and inspection of industrial schools and some other institutions for children and I will provide a brief background to our establishment by way of context.

The use of large institutions to take care of children and adults who were unwanted by their families, their communities and their churches was a well-established practice in Ireland until quite recent times. We now know that these institutions were very often not caring but downright abusive and damaging to those who were consigned into their care, children whose only crime was to have been orphaned, abandoned or poor. The idea that the institutions were reformatory schools for children who had committed offences is misleading because most of them had not committed offences at all.

Industrial schools were originally designed for a good purpose, which was to provide children with skills development that would enable them to transfer into employment when they left, thereby enabling them to move out of the cycle of unemployment and consequent poverty. We now know that some children did receive education in these institutions, as well as support into employment and that many have had successful lives, continued strong links with and affection for members of the religious congregations who ran the institutions. However, many more of them had horrendous experiences in environments that were of themselves brutalising and within which, according to the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, neglect and psychological, physical and sexual abuse was both endemic and systematic. We also know the effects of such early childhood abuse is lifelong, multiple and has diminished the lives of many people in many ways.

As for the State's responses to this situation, there was a period of concerted campaigning for justice by survivors. The broadcast of the television documentary “States of Fear” in 1999 was seminal in provoking the then Taoiseach’s apology on behalf of the State to survivors and the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was established. The commission went on to hear evidence from more than 1,000 survivors through its confidential and investigation committees. Counselling services were also set up at that time for survivors and their relatives, followed by a scheme of financial redress in 2002 and an education finance fund in 2006.

The Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act was passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas in 2012. It provided for the establishment of a statutory fund, to be financed by religious congregations, to support the needs of those survivors who had received awards of compensation through the redress board, through settlements with religious congregations or through orders of the court. The board of the fund first met in March 2013 and began its work of designing and planning the services it would provide for survivors. I took up my role as chief executive in April 2013, bringing to it a strong commitment to ensuring that the fund would operate in a way that was effective in addressing the needs of a group of people that all evidence indicated were extremely disadvantaged as a direct result of their childhood experiences. My professional background, which spans over 40 years, includes significant experience campaigning for the rights of people who are socially excluded, particularly women, single parents, children and people who are homeless, as well as in the design, delivery, management and evaluation of services for them and in leading change across services and voluntary and statutory sectors.

The establishment of the statutory fund was controversial and the approach agreed by the Houses of the Oireachtas was opposed by some survivors, many of whom argued for the division of the fund equally among all those who were eligible to apply. Others were dissatisfied with the eligibility criteria and advocated for the inclusion of people who had not received redress and the relatives of survivors. In response to this latter point, a commitment was given by the then Minister in the course of the adoption of the Bill to reviewing the eligibility criteria after two years of operation. This is the review that the Minister, Deputy Bruton, is about to begin.

In setting up and in respect of the design of the services we put in place, we were highly conscious of this challenging context and were deeply committed to ensuring that what we did was informed by the needs and expressed preferences of survivors. This approach was helped by having four survivors on the board and by carrying out an extensive consultation with potential applicants. The majority of potential applicants were ageing and many of them would clearly find it difficult to engage with a service that was in any way bureaucratic or rigid. It was with these survivors in mind that we designed our application process on the principle that if it worked for the most vulnerable, it would work for everyone. Our central aim was and continues to be to put survivors at the heart of everything we do.

Our application process is values-based, needs-led and person-centred. It is broken into different stages. There is an initial stage and a further stage and when people are ready to make applications to us, they are appointed a dedicated adviser to provide support, advice and information in making an application and in respect of referrals to and advocacy with other organisations and services, as necessary. We try to ensure there are no barriers for someone in applying to us and we pay particular attention to ensuring our application and other information materials are accessible. Plain English is used in all documents explaining how to make an application, we have easy-to-read versions of the application leaflets and there are videos with sign language and subtitles on our website. We are prohibited in the legislation from contacting people who can apply to us directly. We organise a number of outreach events every year at which applicants and potential applicants can come to meet advisers and other staff face to face. In Dublin, we hold a monthly clinic with interpreting services at the deaf village in Cabra 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 began to accept applications in January 2014. By the end of April 2017, 5,209 people were eligible to apply to us. Of those, 350 were waiting assignment, 2,483 were in process – there is a typographical error in the figure in the written submission given to members - and 2,376 had been completed. That is 7% waiting and roughly half in process and half who have been completed. Payments had been made to 4,504 individuals and spend on services to the end of March was €60 million. The average value of assistance provided through the application process is €13,000 and the average number of payments to each applicant is eight. Through the course of an application, there are, on average, 30 telephone calls in addition to whatever written correspondence there might be. We have had hundreds of thousands of contacts to and from applicants since we opened in 2014 and have received 192 complaints to the end of April. Relative to the number of transactions and interactions, that is a relatively small number. There is an independent appeals mechanism in place. Just 4% of our decisions which have gone to appeal have been overturned by the independent appeals officer. More information on our activities and outputs is available on our website and in the briefing document supplied to committee members.

Before finishing my statement I want to refer again to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. Many of the people who testified to the commission did so to ensure that such abuse would be prevented in the future and this is reflected in the recommendations made by the commission, of which there were 20. In the coming couple of years, as Caranua prepares to wind down its operations, it plans to make a contribution to prevention by learning from the past through an independent evaluation of its impact and by capturing the experiences of survivors, that is, of their abuse and early childhood experiences, of redress and their lives since then, as well as their views on how these experiences can be used to build the capacity of other services to recognise and respond to the effects of childhood trauma.

This is not well understood as survivors do not go around with a label on their head reading "I am a survivor". When they approach a GP, the mental health service or a local authority, they do not present as a survivor but as someone with a need. Often, the issues which underlie their needs stem directly from their time in institutions. It is important that all services recognise and deal with that point in order to deal effectively with the needs these people have and to prevent further traumatisation. We look forward to the support of the committee in our work.