Number of abuse cases stuns Ahern

TAOISEACH Bertie Aherne yesterday defended his embattled Education Minister Noel Dempsey in the continuing row over the dramatic resignation of the head of the Child Abuse Commission.

Mr Ahern said he never thought there would be 1,700 cases of abuse to deal with and that the legal problems would be so complex.

Mr Ahern made his comments yesterday in response to Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, who said there could be suspicion when the Department of Education, which is overseeing the commission, is itself under investigation.

Mr Ahern said the Department of Education had done an enormous amount of work and that since 1999, he had been working with the groups who had been abused to try to find resolutions to the problems. He said the compensation scheme for victims was working very well along with the confidential facility for victims to tell their case history.

However, the Taoiseach said the investigative area had got enormously more difficult than anyone had envisaged. In one legal case alone there were 10 legal teams.

Legislation was being challenged in the High Court and Mr Ahern said a recent Supreme court judgment was not helpful. In July, the Supreme Court ruled that Professor Patrick Meenan, 86, did not have to comply with a High Court order for him to give evidence to the Child Abuse Commission.

In addition, Mr Ahern said the procedures being applied by the commission were also being challenged in a High Court case. “We thought we would be able to deal with this in a fairly legally constructive way, but it’s far more complex and costly than we ever envisaged. We will have to find a way of doing it and we are doing our best to do that,” he said.

Earlier in an RTÉ radio interview, the Taoiseach said that those involved were exercising their constitutional rights and the Government now had to find a way of dealing with this.

Meanwhile, there have been appeals from groups representing abuse victims for Ms Justice Laffoy to remain on.

Leader of the Ashling Group for abuse victims, Christine Buckley, has written to the judge suggesting that she reconsider her resignation decision. She said there was a real danger of the commission collapsing for the second time unless two new judges are appointed and greater resources allocated. Another victim support group Right of Place has suggested some of the potential delays faced by the commission could be reduced if video evidence was given.