Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Today I bring the Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill before the House. I am deeply conscious in introducing the Bill of the enormous trauma that has been endured by all survivors of abuse, and I know that nothing we do now can ever truly undo the hurt which has been caused. Nearly 25 years ago, on 11 May 1999, the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, apologised on behalf of the State to the victims of childhood abuse. This apology arose from the important recognition of the extent and effect of childhood abuse which had taken place in institutions which were supervised and regulated by the State.

How a society treats children tells us so much about that society. All children deserve the utmost in care, attention and love. For too many children, this obligation was not honoured. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse shone light onto dark parts of Irish history. I know that nothing can ever be said or done to unravel the pain and suffering that ensued from these abuses, and I acknowledge that today.

In the course of progressing this Bill and other matters, I have met and engaged with survivors of abuse in industrial schools on a number of occasions to hear directly from them. I have been and remain deeply moved by the powerful testimony survivors shared with me. I once again thank all survivors and the members of the consultative forum for their engagement, their commitment and the insights they shared in participating in its work.

The final report of the commission, known as the Ryan report, was published in 2009 and revealed that shocking levels of physical and emotional abuse were endemic in the institutions concerned, while sexual abuse also occurred in many institutions, particularly institutions for boys.

In parallel with the work of the commission, the Residential Institutions Redress Board was established in 2002 to make fair and reasonable awards of redress to those who, as children, were abused while resident in industrial schools, reformatories and other institutions subject to State regulation or inspection. Ultimately, approximately 15,600 survivors received awards of redress from the redress board, totalling almost €1 billion.

In 2006, the Education Finance Board was established on a statutory basis to provide grants to survivors and their relatives to assist them in engaging in education. It was allocated funding of €12.7 million provided by the relevant religious congregations under the 2002 indemnity agreement and was formally dissolved in 2013.

Similarly, funding of over €110 million, which was provided by the congregations following the publication of the Ryan report in 2009, was assigned to the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Board, or Caranua, which was established in 2013 to provide funding supports to survivors in respect of approved services such as health, education and housing. Overall, Caranua provided funding supports totalling almost €98 million to more than 6,000 eligible survivors, with each applicant receiving an average of over €15,000 in supports. In total, to date, these initiatives have involved expenditure of approximately €1.5 billion, including direct redress payments and other supports for survivors amounting to approximately €1.1 billion.

I also note that the national counselling service was established in 2000 as a free nationwide service providing counselling and psychotherapy services to survivors of abuse in residential institutions. In addition, the Department of Education has, since 2002, funded the Origins tracing service for individuals who spent all or part of their childhood in an Irish industrial school and who are interested in tracing information about their parents, siblings or other relatives. The service, which is operated by Barnardos, is available free of charge to survivors living in Ireland and abroad.

As Deputies will be aware, last June, the Government approved the provision of a package of supports and services for survivors of abuse in residential institutions, comprising a number of elements relating to health, education, advocacy and trauma-informed practice.

This Bill has two main purposes: to enable the delivery of these supports to survivors of abuse in residential institutions, such as industrial schools and reformatories, and to provide for the dissolution of the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Board, also known as Caranua. This marks a new phase of the State providing ongoing supports to survivors and builds on the response to this issue to date. It is important that the views of survivors of institutional abuse are heard when considering future supports and services to meet their needs. For that reason, the Department of Education engaged in a structured process of consultation with survivors and survivor groups over a number of years. This process began with the engagement by the Department of professionally qualified facilitators to undertake a series of consultations with survivors on the themes and issues of most concern to them. The facilitators engaged with more than 100 people and held over 30 meetings. These meetings enabled survivors to reflect on their experiences and the State's response to the issue of institutional abuse and to make any recommendations they wished to make.

This first phase of the process resulted in the submission to the Department of a report entitled Consultations with Survivors of Institutional Abuse on Themes and Issues to be addressed by a Survivor Led Consultation Group. The report identified a number of priority issues for survivors, including the health needs of an ageing population and the need to make services easier to access. Phase 2 of the process involved the establishment in 2020 of a survivor-led consultative forum to further consider the themes and issues identified. This was again supported by the facilitators engaged by the Department of Education.

The development of the new package of supports was informed by consideration of the reports of the consultative forum, along with other relevant reports and submissions, including the Facing the Future Together report, which was produced by the Christine Buckley Centre, Right of Place Second Chance, Barnardos and One in Four, together with other relevant stakeholders. These reports provide a clear insight into the areas where survivors feel that supports are required into the future. Although a wide range of possible supports were considered, the balanced and proportionate package of supports which has been approved by the Government will address many of the key issues identified.

Following the publication of the general scheme of this Bill last September, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science conducted pre-legislative scrutiny. I am grateful to the Chair, Deputy Kehoe, and other members of the committee for their examination of the legislative proposals.

I will now outline the key parts of the Bill, as initiated. Part 1 provides for a number of preliminary matters, including commencement, the payment of expenses arising from the administration of the Bill and definitions. A key definition is that of a "former resident" who will be eligible for the supports provided under the Bill. This is defined by reference to the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act 2012, which established Caranua, and essentially provides that a "former resident" is a person who received an award of redress from the Residential Institutions Redress Board or a similar court award or settlement. This is the same group of people who were eligible to apply for supports from Caranua. It is estimated that this currently comprises approximately 10,000 individuals, of whom some two thirds are resident in the State.

Part 2 provides for the delivery of health and education supports to survivors. Section 4 provides for the delivery of an enhanced package of health supports and services to former residents, often referred to as an "enhanced medical card", which will allow survivors access to GP services, medications, home nursing and home helps, dental, ophthalmic and aural services, counselling, chiropody or podiatry, and physiotherapy.

This is the same package of supports which has been provided to survivors of the Magdalen laundries under the Magdalen laundry scheme and is being provided to former residents of mother and baby and county home institutions under the mother and baby institutions payment scheme.

Section 4 also provides a legal basis for the transfer and processing of relevant data by the Department and the Health Service Executive to enable the delivery of these supports. It also requires that such processing is subject to suitable and specific measures to safeguard the rights of data subjects. In recognition of the fact that approximately one third of survivors of abuse in residential institutions live outside of the State, section 5 provides for the making of a once-off health support payment of €3,000 to survivors who are resident abroad, in lieu of the enhanced medical card, to support their health needs. This is the same approach as that taken in the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023. It also provides that payment will not be made to persons who have benefited from the Magdalen laundry scheme or to persons who receive a similar payment under the mother and baby institutions payment scheme. As with section 4, section 5 also provides a legal basis for the transfer and processing of relevant data to support this approach.

Section 6 provides for the payment, on application by a survivor and subject to criteria determined under the Bill, of a grant to assist in engaging in education. Subject to the passage of the Bill, the Department will establish a new scheme involving the payment of cash grants ranging from €500 to €2,000 to survivors who are engaging in, or who wish to continue to engage in, further and higher education. This scheme will also ensure that survivors are not required to pay the student contribution charge where this would otherwise apply. These grants will be in addition to the wide range of enhanced supports in place for those seeking to engage in further and higher education, including the free fees initiative, the SUSI student grant scheme and the back to education allowance, as well as initiatives such as Springboard.

Part 3 contains a number of standard provisions relating to the dissolution of Caranua. As I outlined, Caranua’s specific purpose was to disburse funding supports to survivors in areas such as health, housing and education from a ring-fenced fund of €110 million, plus interest of €1.38 million, which was provided by the relevant congregations following the publication of the Ryan report in 2009. As the funding available to it was finite in nature and could not, under the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act 2012, be supplemented by Exchequer funding, Caranua began winding down its operations in 2018 and effectively closed in March 2021. Part 3 provides for the appointment by the Minister of a dissolution day, upon which Caranua will be dissolved for the transfer of relevant functions to the Minister for the transfer of liability for loss, property, rights and liabilities, for the preparation by the Minister of Caranua’s final accounts and final annual report and for the closure of the investment account which holds what remains of the statutory fund.

I note in particular that section 14 provides for the transfer of Caranua’s records to the Minister and for the processing of that data for certain specified purposes. It is important to note that the records held by Caranua do not include detailed testimony or accounts of survivors’ experience of abuse in residential institutions of the type held by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse or the Residential Institutions Redress Board. The records relate solely to Caranua’s role of disbursing funding supports to survivors, including day-to-day administrative records and records relating to applications made by survivors. These data and records will continue to be subject to both GDPR and freedom of information legislation, and survivors will continue to be entitled to exercise their GDPR and FOI rights, including seeking a copy of their data. The Department of Education has engaged closely with both the Office of the Attorney General and the Data Protection Commission in relation to provisions relating to the transfer and processing of data under the Act. Appropriate and suitable safeguards will be put in place, in consultation with the Data Protection Commission, where necessary, to ensure that all such data is held confidentially and in compliance with all data protection requirements.

Section 17 provides for the utilisation of any funds transferred to the Minister upon Caranua’s dissolution and provides that these funds will be used only for purposes benefitting former residents. However, it should be noted that very limited funding remains available to Caranua at this time.

Part 4 contains a number of miscellaneous provisions. Section 18 provides for the transfer of certain data to the Minister by the Residential Institutions Redress Board, the data concerned being the name, address and date of birth of each individual who received an award of redress from the board, and for the processing of that data where necessary and proportionate to confirm the eligibility of a person for the ongoing supports provided for under the Bill.

Section 19 provides for the making of relevant regulations by the Minister, while section 20 provides for the amendment of the Nursing Homes Support Scheme Act 2009 to ensure that redress payments made by the Residential Institutions Redress Board are no longer taken into account when making financial assessments under the fair deal scheme.

Section 21 provides for the amendment of the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023 to take account of the supports to be provided under this Bill. The 2023 Act currently provides that a person who has benefitted from the Magdalen laundry scheme will not be eligible for a health support payment under the Act. The proposed amendment will ensure that this will also apply to a former resident who receives a health support payment under section 5 of the Bill.

As already noted, the Government also approved the delivery of initiatives relating to advocacy and trauma-informed practice. Although these do not require a legislative basis and are therefore not reflected in the Bill, they represent critical elements of the overall package. With regard to advocacy, the consultative forum’s report highlighted the particular challenges that survivors face in navigating access to public services. The Department of Education has therefore entered into a grant funding arrangement with Sage Advocacy, an independent advocacy organisation with a strong track record in providing advocacy supports to older people, vulnerable adults and healthcare patients, to develop information, support and advocacy services to assist individual survivors in engaging with and accessing relevant services and supports. As part of this arrangement, Sage Advocacy is required to develop and implement a communications and outreach plan to ensure that as many survivors as possible are made aware of all relevant supports, including the new supports to be provided under this Bill. Sage Advocacy has already begun to roll out this service and is engaging with survivors and survivor groups to promote awareness of its availability.

In relation to trauma-informed practice, the extent to which survivors continue to live with the trauma of the past has also been highlighted and the need for service providers to receive training in trauma-informed practice has been identified. For that reason, the Department of Education will arrange for the development of a training course and related training materials to be disseminated to service providers across the civil and public service. It is intended to develop and roll out this initiative before the end of this year.

Given the importance of delivering to survivors the health and education supports outlined in this Bill, I hope to progress its passage through both Houses of the Oireachtas as quickly as possible.

See this speech in context