Mr. Peter Tyndall:

In 2016, before we commenced the investigation, we wrote to the Department. I can make a copy of the letter available to the committee, if that is helpful. In that letter we set out our view that there was a prima faciecase that there had been maladministration in the way the criteria were interpreted, and we understood that the Department took a different view. We said, in that letter, that should the Department feel that the appropriate way forward was to go to Government to seek revisions to the scheme, whereas we did not believe those to be necessary, we would support them in going forward. The Department, as the committee will understand, did not respond positively to that suggestion and that is why the investigation commenced. That gives some context to some of the areas that members sought to elucidate.

The memorandum to Government, which we have seen, did not specifically include people who were beneficiaries of the residential institutions redress scheme. The scheme was specifically intended to address injury caused by abuse in one of the listed institutions. It was not intended to redress being resident in an institution and working in a Magdalen laundry. Our contention remains that it was entirely possible to interpret the scheme. The committee will have seen from the report that an administrative note was added to exclude people who had access to the residential institutions redress scheme. That was not part of the memorandum to Government.

The Department properly says that it does not have access to information, officially, as to which women benefitted from the scheme but I must tell the committee that the application form for the scheme asks women if they have benefitted from same. While it does not have access to the records of the scheme, it has asked the women. Whereas nothing that was said to the committee is incorrect, it is not the whole picture.

We have heard An Grianán mentioned. An Grianán was not a separate building until 1990. It was separated from the rest of the institution by a stud partition. Essentially, people were in the same building, worked in the same laundry, ate the same foods and saw the same nuns. We simply do not accept that this was a distinct institution. Parts of it may have had a different name but in any other ordinary human understanding of what was happening this was the same place. There is no dispute that these women worked in the laundries that are covered by the scheme. I have to keep coming back to that point. This is not disputed at any stage.

Finally, I want to come to the issue of Ri Villa.