British services urged to ‘screen’ Irish victims

BRITISH mental health services and homeless agencies should be trained to help ‘screen’ Irish people whose lives were devastated by institutional abuse, it was claimed.

The Federation of Irish Societies (FIS) said there was a “lost generation” of Irish people who suffered abuse at the hands of the congregations and others and whose attempts to leave it behind by emigrating had seen them fall on hard times.

FIS chief executive Jennie McShannon said the pain and anger caused by institutional abuse had, for some people, been exacerbated by moving to a Britain that was, at that stage, not receptive to them.