Laffoy report to attack Government role in inquiry

THE long-awaited interim report from Ms Justice Mary Laffoy will be published next Friday and is expected to be highly critical of the Government’s support for the Child Abuse Commission.

Ms Justice Laffoy resigned as the commission’s chairperson last September because she had not received sufficient co-operation or resources from the Government.

During her four years as chairperson, Ms Justice

Laffoy, repeatedly complained to the Government about the lack of resources to process the 1,712 cases that needed investigation.

She said the Department of Education was very slow in providing vital documentation and she also criticised them for not providing enough legal staff to process the huge workload.

The commission has dealt with 21 cases completely concerning one institution and Ms Justice Laffoy will give an approximate estimate of the legal costs to process these cases in her

report on Friday.

Education Minister Noel Dempsey ordered a review on the workings of the commission last autumn because he was concerned about claims that it could cost up to E200 million to process the huge workload over 11 years.

Ms Justice Laffoy resigned because she felt the review was putting her work in a legal limbo since it could change the terms of reference of the commission.

But Mr Dempsey rejected the judge’s claims that the Government had stymied the commission’s work or had left the chairperson powerless. He insisted that there were no plans to diminish the work of the commission and appointed Mr Justice Sean Ryan to carry out a review of the workings of the commission.

The minister had supported the notion of just hearing a sample of cases to reduce the costs of commission’s work, but Mr Justice Ryan did not support that proposal in his report published earlier this month.

Instead, he recommended that groups of cases could be heard together, removing the right of every individual to give oral evidence.

The minister has yet to decide what the commission’s future terms of reference will be.

But he has admitted that the total cost of the commission’s investigations and compensation awards that will be paid out by the Residential Redress Board to victims of child abuse in institutions will be over 1 billion.

Meanwhile, the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee, which is investigating the controversial deal which the State did with 18 religious orders on compensating abuse victims, will continue its hearings on March 4.

The committee is investigating whether or not the State got value for money

in the deal which allowed the religious orders pay a lump sum of E120m in return for an indemnity against any further compensation claims from victims of child abuse.

There was huge criticism of the deal because it is estimated that the total cost of these claims will be over E500m and the State will end up picking up most of the tab as well as the legal costs.