Institutional child abuse claims list set to top 12,500
The final figure will be more than double the number of applications predicted when the Residential Institutions Redress Board (RIRB) was established in 2002.
To date, the board has made around 4,500 offers of awards at a cost of €332 million.
Education Minister Mary Hanafin said the board’s terms of office would be extended for a further two years to deal with all the applications.
For the last two months Marie Therese O’Loughlin has slept in front of Leinster House, on some of the coldest nights of the year, in a bid to get the Legion of Mary’s Regina Cheli Hostel added to 144 institutions on the RIRB’s list.
Ms Hanafin told the Dáil on Tuesday night that her department had made a double check to see if anything had been missed but had found no evidence of the State’s role in this home.
British spokesman for the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA), Patrick Walsh, said they were pleased to learn yesterday that discussions were ongoing within the Catholic Church with the hope of resolving the matter.
Mr Walsh said Irish SOCA saw no reason for an extension to the deadline, as the RIRB had been well advertised since April 2002.
He pointed out, however, that the minister’s decision to extend the lifetime of the board confirmed their fears that some survivors could be waiting up to three years to have their cases processed.
“We would urge the Government to provide the board with additional resources in the light of the exceptional number of people now coming forward,” he said.
