Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

We will not tax more, spend more or put up school fees. Some 14,000 applications have been made to the Residential Institutions Redress Board. Earlier estimates of the final cost by the Department of Education and Science, and of the board itself, were lower than this. The Department's estimate prior to the establishment of the board was €610 million, including legal and administrative costs. It must be accepted that nobody could have predicted with certainty how many applications there would be. It was not known how many people were in our institutions that were under State control and it was not known how many of those would put forward a case of abuse of one kind or another. I think we are getting closer to knowing what that is. The final cost of the scheme will not be known until the board has completed its work. The estimate that the final cost could be up to €1.3 billion was based on the number of applications received by the Department at the 2005 deadline, a cumulative average award of €76,000, and legal and administrative costs of approximately 20%.

In outlining this estimate last January, the Comptroller and Auditor General also referred to the possibility of the average award decreasing as more applications are processed. Allowing for this, he put the final cost of the scheme at between €1 billion and €1.3 billion. He added that any estimate of the ultimate liability arising from the redress scheme is based on assumptions which are impossible to validate and should therefore be treated with caution. Recent trends in awards made by the board would suggest that the average award is indeed falling, as the Comptroller and Auditor General said, but there is no guarantee that that trend will continue.

The fact has been accepted by the Comptroller and Auditor General's report that none of us could have known what the figures would be. Indeed, the redress board has emphasised that. The board's original estimate, in its 2003 report, was between 6,500 and 7,000 applicants and it estimated between 7,500 and 8,000 applicants in its 2004 report. The figures were tentative and there were no precedents for the scheme. Either way, those are the statistics. I know Deputy Rabbitte's view on this matter and he knows mine. As far as the deal is concerned, we had an obligation to set up a scheme to deal with people who were abused, in one form or another, in State institutions run by religious. Seven years ago, I apologised on behalf of the State and I said we would set up a scheme.

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