Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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Question 289: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if legislation will be brought forward to establish a redress board in respect of compensation for victims of non-residential institutions, that is, day school pupils. [31197/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The residential institutions redress board was established as an alternative mechanism to the courts to provide financial redress to former residents of institutions who, as children, were abused while in institutions over which the State had a supervisory or regulatory responsibility.

The rationale behind the setting up of the redress board was that children in the residential institutions were separated from their parents and therefore did not have the benefit of the care and protection which children in the care of their families usually enjoy. The institutions concerned controlled all aspects of the children's lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no reasonable capacity for access to or involvement by their parents. Therefore, the children in the institutions relied to a significant degree on the public bodies that had a statutory duty to protect them.

This situation does not apply to children attending day schools who were enrolled there by their parents and continued to reside with their families under the guardianship of their parents. Accordingly, there are no plans to extend the remit of the redress board or to establish a similar board for pupils of day schools.