Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to acknowledge the motion that has been brought forward and the work of Deputies Connolly and Daly and of Deputy O'Loughlin from Fianna Fáil. I am not going to go bashing anybody but this issue is discussed quite a lot by our party and we have dealt with people who have been victims of such abuse. No Deputy in the House has a monopoly on these issues, so to portray Fianna Fáil as a party that does not care about this issue or does not do any work in the area compared to others is just not fair.

While Fianna Fáil has submitted an amendment on this motion we also have our own counter motion, as Deputies O'Loughlin and Byrne have said. I believe there are elements of the motion that have real merit and there are many positives to it, especially the proposals to consider streamlining the process, to provide face-to-face appointments with applicants, to draw up a new survivor-led customer charter and to establish and clarify a system of appropriate oversight of the operations of Caranua. All of these recommendations are welcome, but it is important that we await the review of Caranua's eligibility criteria. This is ongoing and due in a very short time, hopefully in July. Yes, there may be a need to expand the eligibility criteria for Caranua and its services but we should wait to hear the recommendations of the statutory review, in conjunction with the stakeholders' views, before supporting specific proposals to expand eligibility.

We all know that reviews cost money and we should at least wait to see the outcome of the current review process before establishing another overlapping, duplicative review. It is very important in the process in which we are now engaged to get this right because there are situations and difficulties. I recall a recent article in The Irish Times about Caranua. The article specifically referred to what Caranua's guidelines said: "We will listen to you ... we will treat you courteously [and] fairly ... and [will] apologise if we get something wrong and do our best to put it right." These are the guidelines that are set out by Caranua.

Fianna Fáil's counter motion makes an explicit commitment to facilitate the passage of any legislative changes required to implement any reforms to eligibility and Caranua functions, which may be recommended by the review or as part of the stakeholder engagement. We must remember that the function of Caranua is to provide support to people who, as children, experienced abuse in residential institutions. Those institutions, many of which were run by religious orders, were funded and regulated by the State. Of the €110 million that has been pledged to the scheme €56 million has been expended in the support of more than 4,000 eligible former institution residents. It is imperative that we do nothing that could jeopardise or impact the 4,000 former residents who are in receipt of funding or services, or to deplete the funding pool for the approximately 15,000 people who are eligible.

Let us not forget that we are talking about not just numbers and figures. These are real people who have been left with a huge heartbroken void in their lives. These are people who suffered horrific abuse by the very institutions that were supposed to protect, nurture and take care of them. I would be fearful that some of the proposals in the motion today could have unintended consequences and need, therefore, to be scrutinised very, very carefully. For example, one proposal seeks to expand eligibility for the fund to include former residents who have not previously sought a settlement. The Department states that this amendment would mean that anybody who had attended a residential institution would, technically, be able to apply to the fund. There is no way of knowing how many potential recipients this could include. This could overload the scheme. It could also deplete resources that are earmarked for existing survivors and services provided by Caranua. Everybody agrees and accepts that something needs to be done, but whatever we do, we need to get it right.

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