North to set up abuse inquiry

THE terms of an inquiry into historic institutional abuse in the North will be announced in the autumn.

In conjunction with abuse survivors, Northern Executive ministers said they will explore a series of options and formats over the summer recess.

A report prepared by a cross-departmental working group set up to examine how an inquiry would proceed was presented to ministers at the last executive meeting of the term at Stormont Castle.

It outlines a number of possibilities, including one based on the model of the damning Ryan Report, which exposed decades of endemic abuse in the state at the hands of clerical institutions.

A decision on how to detail and investigate past crimes committed in Catholic church and state-run institutions in the North will be made by the group when the ministers return from their recess in the autumn.

Junior ministers Martina Anderson and Jonathan Bell will contact carious victims’ groups and individual survivors over the summer to gauge their views on the options contained in the interdepartmental taskforce report.