Little on record of children held in institutions

LITTLE or no account was recorded of the conditions under which thousands of children were kept in institutionalised care after Ireland gained independence, the State’s inquiry into the emergence of child abuse heard yesterday.

Prior to 1922 inspectors reported to the British Home Office’s Children’s Department. They had been vigilant and produced annual reports.

In 1930 the then Department of Education produced a 200-plus page report, but only eight pages referred to industrial and reformatory schools.

“By the 1960s even the commentary had disappeared,” said Dr Eoin O’Sullivan, a lecturer in Social Policy in Trinity College Dublin’s Social Studies Department.

Dr O’Sullivan, who was a consultant for RTE’s documentary States of Fear, was giving evidence to Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse on the emergence of child abuse institutions.

He told the commission’s Investigation Committee that capitation grants continued right into 1984, a situation that encouraged managers of institutions to retain a high number of children.

In Britain the problems associated with capitation grants were recognised in the early 1920s and were subsequently abolished and replaced with a block grant.

Britain also began to move away from institutionalised care in the 1920s, describing it as “an ugly word for an ugly thing.”

After Ireland gained independence there were around 5,000 children in industrial and reform schools , a figure that had jumped to 6,700 by the early 1930s and then remained at around 5,500 throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

Dr O’Sullivan also referred to pressure in the 1950s from the religious congregations to combat the decline in children in industrial and reform schools.

From the 1950s onwards the number of children began to decline with 2,000 in institutionalised care in 1964.

Schools were closing because they were becoming uneconomical.

Dr O’Sullivan said religious congregations became critical of the way judges were using the Probation Act. They asked the Department of Education to tell the Department of Justice to stop using the Act but the Department refused to do so.

He pointed out that so many people were institutionalised by 1956, either as children, unmarried mothers or people with a mental illness, that the chances of a person ending up in an institution was as high as one in 100.

He also pointed out that the kind of institutionalised care that an unmarried woman ended up in depended on whether it was her first or second pregnancy.

Dr O’Sullivan told the committee that women who gave birth outside marriage remained in institutionalised care for two years as a form of penance.

The inquiry also heard that it was not until the mid-1960s that the move away from institutionalised care for children began to be made.

Health Minister Micheál Martin is due to give evidence to the commission tomorrow and will be followed by the former Minister for Education, Dr Michael Woods, on Thursday.