Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)

-----especially in regard to complying with a small number of discovery directions. However, in this regard, the commission's third interim report of December 2003 acknowledges some of the difficulties that were caused or contributed to by the committee, in that, for example, there was not sufficient clarity about what was sought or insufficient time was being allowed for compliance.

Furthermore, I would point out that in December 2003, in order to ensure that criticism of the Department's responses to the commission was fully explored, the then Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, appointed an eminent QC and former chairperson of the Bar Council of England and Wales to conduct a review of the Department's interaction with the commission. That report reached the conclusion that the difficulties over discovery were not due to obstruction or concealment but rather to poor historic record storage systems and misunderstandings about what was required. In all cases, my Department fully complied with the discovery directions. The issue of including day schools in the redress scheme was also raised.

I want to address the rationale behind the setting up of the redress scheme which was that children in institutions were separated from their parents and dragged from their homes while other family members watched on. Others spent years in these institutions, their only crime being that they had a single parent or a parent who could not feed them or look after them. They woke up in institutions, spent their full day in institutions and went to bed at night in the institutions. They had nobody to whom to talk or tell their stories nor did they have the benefit of the care and protection which children living with their families usually enjoy. In the case of abuse which occurs in day national schools, my Department has been found not liable for such abuse by the Supreme Court judgment. This is not to say that the abuse suffered by persons in this setting is in any way less serious or abhorrent.

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