Mr. Ned Costello:

A question was raised about the future of the residential institutions redress unit. The so-called RIRU is a unit within my division in the Department that deals with anything concerning institutional abuse or other cases of abuse, for example, in day schools, which arose in the past. Obviously due to the structure of the Department there are political decisions involved. There are no plans to close down the residential institutions redress unit, to the contrary. We have a large work programme, an interdepartmental committee, the post hoc review and continued oversight of Caranua, which are all major issues. We also have the Retention of Records Bill, for which we were before the committee for pre-legislative scrutiny. We hope to bring the legislation forward in the course of next year. We will actively consider the question of memorialisation, which is of concern.

As members of the committee will be aware, a memorial was planned a number of years ago for the Garden of Remembrance but it did not get planning permission. Coming up to the anniversary of the Ryan report, there is still very much a live issue around how we commemorate, memorialise and mark what was a very sad period in Irish history. They are all activities on which we will be focusing in the coming year.

On the question around the board of Caranua, investigations are, ultimately, political decisions but we expect that the Minister will shortly fill the two vacancies on the board of Caranua with survivors.