200 new abuse victims claim on fund

Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

More than 200 institutional child abuse victims sought housing, health, or other aid for the first time in the two months coming up to the final deadline for claims from the Caranua fund.

The statutory fund for victims of child abuse in residential institutions announced in late May that it would no longer accept applications after August 1.

The law restricts its spending to the €110m promised by religious orders after agreeing to volunteer additional funding in the wake of the 2009 Ryan Report on institutional child abuse.

Figures provided to the Irish Examiner show that Caranua, which administers the fund created by the 2012 law, received 509 applications after the May 31 announcement of this month’s deadline. They included 230 people who had not previously applied, while 191 previous applications were reactivated.

Caranua has received a further 88 applications up to the August 1 deadline from people who previously sought aid from the fund.

The main publicity around the final Caranua closing date was restricted to a press statement and ads placed in Irish Sunday newspapers and Irish-community news outlets in Britain and the United States. However, Caranua also advised groups working with institutional abuse survivors in May that it would announce a final call for claims shortly, and posters were circulated to public buildings, medical facilities, and other locations.

Caranua is legally restricted from spending any more than €110m, from which running costs that amounted to more than €8m by late May must also be paid. By then, it had already given €74m to more than 5,000 abuse survivors for housing, health, education, and other services.

However, Education Minister Richard Bruton asked in May that applications continue to be accepted in cases of hardship or exceptional circumstances after the August 1 closing date.

With concerns raised by groups working with institutional abuse victims about supports after the exhausting of the Caranua fund, Mr Bruton also promised that an inter-departmental committee to address this issue would meet “in the near future”.

However, the Department of Education has told the Irish Examiner it will be September before the first meeting of this group is held.

The committee is to examine how survivors’ needs can be met by existing mainstream State services, and will include representatives from the departments of education, health, justice, and social protection.

Mr Bruton also plans to publish soon the analysis of a survey that closed two months ago for survivors to offer views on the format of planned consultations with them about measures by the State “following the realisation of the systemic abuse that occurred in residential institutions”.

He said he supports a proposal from a number of survivors for meetings to serve as a forum for former institutional residents to reflect on their experiences, the State’s response to institutional abuse, and to make any recommendations.

The views on the format of the consultation, which is to be managed by an external facilitator, were also being accepted from survivors through a free telephone service operated by Barnardos.

The Department of Education told the Irish Examiner last month that it still expects the last €8.8m due to the Caranua fund from the Christian Brothers to be paid over this year.