Reparation for abuse - State must force orders to comply

Every day there seems to be further developments in reaction to the Ryan Report on child abuse of children in residential institutions. Yesterday, the director of CORI Justice, Fr Sean Healy, stated that the scale and the depth of the disclosures in the report necessitated a reassessment of what has been done to date.

Fr Healy said religious congregations involved need to make “a larger contribution to meet the bill for redress” for the huge wrong done to the most vulnerable people. In fact, he agreed that the religious congregations involved should essentially meet half the financial costs of the redress.

The redress system was supposedly set up to save victims having to endure a confrontational system when they would give their evidence. But anyone who heard and watched one of the victims, Michael O’Brien, on RTÉ’s Questions & Answers on Monday night got an insight not only into the pain of the abuse that he suffered in school, but also the humiliation that he suffered before the redress board.