Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this important issue. He will be aware that the residential institutions statutory fund board, also known as Caranua, was established in 2013. Its specific purpose was to disburse the cash contributions of €110 million pledged by religious congregations following the publication of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, more commonly referred to as the Ryan report.

The contributions received from the congregations were held in an investment account managed by the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, and, including interest, the total funding available to Caranua was €101.38 million. Since its establishment, it has provided grants and funding supports to more than 6,000 survivors of institutional abuse, and for the most part those payments have related to health and housing. It has also provided support to survivors for education, training and exceptional needs.

The 2012 Act provides that all expenditure by Caranua must be met by the statutory fund, including grants and administrative expenditure, and does not provide for the Exchequer to supplement that fund in any way. Therefore, in anticipation of the exhaustion of the statutory fund, Caranua announced in 2018 that it would not accept new applications after 1 August 2018 unless there were exceptional circumstances. I understand it undertook an extensive publicity campaign to ensure that survivors were aware of this date, targeted in particular at survivors who had not previously benefited from the fund.

Caranua has since that time dealt mainly with applications on hand. To progress applications, it is dependent to a large extent on the receipt of paperwork such as quotes or invoices from survivors. Its application adviser team has worked to establish personalised timelines for applicants to ensure that their applications can be progressed, although the Covid-19 pandemic has, for obvious reasons, had an impact.

At this time, Caranua has only a small number of applications remaining to be finalised and has reduced its staffing component during the wind-down phase. It expects to have made any final payments by 11 December, as the Senator mentioned, and most of the remaining staff will leave the organisation on 31 December. For that reason, it is not expected that any applications will remain open when it is formally dissolved. Therefore, it is not expected that any transitional arrangements will be required. It expects to have utilised all of its available funding at the time of dissolution, so there are unlikely to be any significant cash assets remaining.Non-cash assets are unlikely to have a significant value. Its fixed assets had a book value of about €74,000 as of 31 December 2018.

Survivors have expressed concerns to the Minister, Deputy Foley, about how their needs into the future are going to be met, and the Senator mentioned some of those. I believe it is the intention of the Minister, Deputy Foley, to bring to Government proposals for a package of ongoing supports for survivors and for those supports to be in place when Caranua is dissolved. My understanding is that, primarily, most of the moneys have been spent on health and social services and educational services. Caranua is prohibited from spending money on rent and mortgages but it can spend money on white goods, and dental and ophthalmic costs have also been prevalent. I understand that, from 2 August 2018 until September 2020, there were some 342 late applications which came into that cohort under the exceptional circumstances bracket.