Irish Examiner view: Victims again forced to bear burden of legal case

It is not too late for the State to show some generosity of spirit towards the likes of the Dunderrow survivors

Readers will recall that one survivor of abuse in the school, Louise O’Keeffe, eventually received compensation in 2014, but that came after a long-running legal battle against the State which only ended with her victory at the European Court of Human Rights. File picture: Michael Mac Sweeeney/Provision

The appalling history of child sexual abuse in Ireland continues to haunt us. For confirmation of that, we need only see the news this week of the survivors, in Dunderrow National School in Cork, of abuse which dates back to the ’60s and ’70s.

Readers will recall that one survivor of abuse in the school, Louise O’Keeffe, eventually received compensation in 2014, but that came after a long-running legal battle against the State which only ended with her victory at the European Court of Human Rights.

One would have thought that alone would shame the State into an appropriate redress scheme, but the scheme which the then government set up following Ms O’Keeffe’s case collapsed in 2019.

A revised redress scheme operated from 2021 to 2023, but many of the abuse survivors were ineligible for consideration due to one of the scheme’s conditions, which required its applicants to have sued the State before 2021.

That was just the most recent instance of the State failing children in this case.

Ms O’Keeffe’s original case for damages went through the Irish judicial system until the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Education was not liable because the school was managed by the Catholic Church, even though the State paid the salary of the abuser, Leo Hickey.

To bring matters up to date, the Dunderrow survivors have stated that the reason they are now taking legal action is because mediation attempts with the Department of Education have failed.

The State has failed this group and others like them all along the line — a view shared by the European Court of Human Rights. When ruling on the O’Keeffe case, it found that the State had failed to “put in place any mechanism of effective State control against the risks of such abuse occurring”.

It is not too late for the same State to show some generosity of spirit towards the likes of the Dunderrow survivors. They should not have to shoulder the burden and stress of a legal case when a proper redress scheme should have been put in place years ago.

Will Burnham try to undo Brexit?

The announcement by Keir Starmer that he is to step down as prime minister and leader of the British Labour Party came as no shock. When Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election, it was all but inevitable, and Starmer’s departure opens the door for Burnham to move into 10 Downing Street as Britain’s seventh prime minister in the last decade.

Many in the UK will hope that Burnham, a Liverpudlian who was mayor of Greater Manchester until that recent by-election, will offer some stability after the turmoil of the decade since Brexit. His track record of achievement in the Manchester area suggests an ability to get things done that seemed beyond Mr Starmer.

However, for Irish observers there will be a slightly different question: How Irish is Burnham, and what does that mean for us?

Starmer’s fondness for a Donegal GAA jersey while playing five-a-side soccer ran in parallel with good working relationships with the Taoiseach and Tánaiste.

The former has already said Burnham has taken “a particular interest in Ireland” and visited this country on several occasions. Burnham has relatively distant Irish ancestry on his mother’s side and attended a Catholic school as a child in Liverpool, a city with a traditionally strong affinity with Ireland.

What may be more significant for us, however, are his views on Brexit. As recently as last September, Burnham said: “I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime... Shouldn’t we start calling out the disaster that Brexit has been more directly?”

Last month, however, he said: “My view is that Brexit has been damaging, but... I am not proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU.”

The natural caution of a politician on the cusp of victory or an about-turn, auguring more vacillation at the top of British politics? Only time will tell.

Banker’s policies enabled crash

The death was announced this week of Alan Greenspan, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, the American equivalent of our Central Bank. He was 100.

Greenspan had a long career at the very heart of the US establishment. His standing was underlined by the fact that he served successive US presidents during his 19-year stewardship of the Federal Reserve. His contribution to fostering the economic boom of the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s was just one of the glowing entries on his CV.

Within two years of his departure from the Federal Reserve in 2006, however, the worldwide financial system was in a crisis driven by the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market. Mr Greenspan was criticised for contributing to the property bubble by not stopping risky lending practices.

At a Congressional hearing he said: “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”

However, he was reminded at the same hearing that he had also said previously that government regulators were no better than the market in imposing discipline on financial institutions. One politician asked if Greenspan had been wrong. “Partially,” he said.

That refusal to take responsibility may help to explain the mindset which led to the property bubble — and to the subsequent crash.

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