Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Tá fáilte ar ais roimh Mr. Ó Foghlú and his team. Before I start asking questions - I will ask a few and try to stay away from statements - I think it is important to place why we are here with a redress board, a commission of inquiry and the conclusions of the Ryan report. I hope the witnesses have read the conclusions and I hope Caranua has read them. There are 43 conclusions and recommendations. The report is enormous. I am going to ask if the Department has changed its attitude. From the 2002 indemnity, there is still money outstanding 14 years later. Conclusion 6.03 states that "the deferential and submissive attitude of the Department of Education towards the Congregations compromised its ability to carry out its statutory duty of inspection and monitoring of the schools." That is not referring to the Secretary General personally, but to the Department.

Recommendation 7.03 states:

The Congregations need to examine how their ideals became debased by systemic abuse. They must ask themselves how they came to tolerate breaches of their own rules and, when sexual and physical abuse was discovered, how they responded to it, and to those who perpetrated it. They must examine their attitude to neglect and emotional abuse and, more generally, how the interests of the institutions and the Congregations came to be placed ahead of those of the children who were in their care.

It is very important to place this in context. We will be looking at Caranua and at the refusal to entertain another redress board for the mother and baby homes. That is the context this is in.

With regard to the redress board, the figures from the Comptroller and Auditor General seem very high at €1.2 billion or something. The average payout to the survivors was €60,000. Is that not right?