David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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1038. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a payment will be issued to a person (details supplied). [19700/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy will be aware, Caranua was established in 2013 with the purpose of disbursing the contributions of €110m (€111.38m including interest) provided by the religious congregations following the publication of the Ryan Report in 2009, by funding approved services to support the needs of former residents who as children suffered abuse in relevant institutions.

The contributions received from the congregations were, in accordance with the Act, held in an account managed by the National Treasury Management Agency. All of Caranua’s costs, including both the costs of providing services for survivors and the administrative costs associated with Caranua’s operations, were, in accordance with the 2012 Act, required to be met from the funding available in the Statutory Fund. The Act did not provide for the funding available to Caranua to be supplemented by the Exchequer.

As the Statutory Fund was finite in nature, Caranua announced in May 2018 that it would cease to accept applications from 1 August 2018. Following that deadline, it mainly focussed on processing applications on hand, although it also undertook targeted outreach to certain groups, including survivors who are in prison. Caranua made all final payments in early-December 2020, with the exception of a very limited number of cases where applications were reverted to Caranua upon appeal, or where Caranua had agreed to make staggered payments for services beyond the 12 December deadline.

Caranua implemented a planned wind-down of operations over its final year of operations, in accordance with a detailed plan and under the supervision of a sub-committee of its Board.

In general terms, it is important to note that the approval of an application by Caranua does not necessarily mean that a payment was ultimately made. Where a decision was made that a particular service could be funded, Caranua would “pre-approve” the service, but this would be subject to the provision of additional paperwork and information from the applicant, such as quotes from service providers. This “pre-approval” would therefore give the applicant assurance that if they followed up with the required paperwork, that the service would be funded. Where this paperwork was not forthcoming, Caranua could not proceed with making the related payment. In some cases, applications remained open for a number of years for this reason, despite Caranua’s ongoing engagement with the applicants concerned.

Throughout the course of 2020, Caranua engaged intensively with all remaining applicants, and set out clear and person-centred timelines for the provision of all of the required information, in an effort to ensure that all outstanding applications could be closed. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, a number of applicants did not provide the required information by the deadline set.

The Department is not in a position nor has any basis to re-open any applications which were concluded by Caranua.