Survivors Of Ireland's Industrial Schools
Caranua staff are cold hearted like the Redress Board staff.
Old cold hearted civil servants on a good wage paid due to our suffering and they treat us like crap in a toilet bowl!
Maybe survivors should question Caranua why they like to treat survivors like crap? Our abuse funds are good enough for them so what is their problem?
Are they from catholic backgrounds? And this is our punishment for speaking the truth about their catholic loving sick twisted vile scum of the earth scumbags?
The Christian Brothers have paid €3.3m to the State in the past six weeks as the order seeks to complete its contributions to a €110m redress fund for survivors of institutional child abuse.
The sum is revealed in a letter from Department of Education secretary general Seán Ó Foghlú to the Dáil’s spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
It also sets out how some properties pledged by a number of religious orders in 2002 and 2009 have not yet been fully transferred.
The correspondence comes ahead of an appearance today by officials from the Department of Education and Caranua – the State body that oversees the fund that pays for educational, health and housing supports for abuse victims.
Mr Ó Foghlú says contributions from the Congregation of Christian Brothers in September and October amounted to €3.3m. This means the total amount contributed by various congregations stands at €106.9m.
The letter says that the Christian Brothers have committed to completing their outstanding cash contribution of €3.5m by the end of the year.
Of this, €3.07m will be available to Caranua to bring the total fund it has administered since it was set up in 2013 to €110m.
The remaining €430,000 of the Christian Brothers’s contribution will go towards the costs of the National Children’s Hospital.
Mr Ó Foghlú says that two properties pledged by different religious orders under the 2002 Indemnity Agreement have yet to be fully transferred.
He said it should be noted that the intended recipients of the two premises, the HSE and Department of Education, are in place and the State is already benefiting from the properties.
In terms of the 2009 voluntary offers made by religious congregations, 15 of the 18 properties have been fully transferred to the State.
The estimated timeframe for transferring the last three, including the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, is listed as the fourth quarter of 2019.
Caranua’s opening statement for today’s PAC meeting says that since 2014, 5,987 survivors of abuse have been deemed eligible for funding supports.
By the end of September, Caranua has made more than 54,000 support payments to a total value of €91.3m. Home improvement supports came to €65.1m, there has been €24.5m paid in health supports and €1.4m for education.
The statement says that €11.5m has been spent on Caranua’s operations. The organisation’s board is said to have “worked determinedly to minimise” these costs.
PAC chairman Seán Fleming last night said the committee would be keen to discuss Caranua’s up-to-date financial position and how it exercised control over grant payments.
He said members would also want to discuss the most recent update from the Department of Education on the status of property transfers and cash payments from religious congregations.
Christian Brothers pay €3.3m in six weeks as part of historic abuse redress
Should Leinster House hold a one minute silence each year as a mark of respect for survivors and their families
Like a National Day of Remembrance? Not only for survivors of the Industrial schools, but also the mother and baby homes, Magdalene Laundries etc etc? Example May 20th was the publication of the Ryan Report
On 20 May 2009, Ireland made international headlines when the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) was published.
The Ryan Report, as it was to become known, quickly entered the Irish national lexicon as bywords to the Church and State’s shameful treatment of children in institutional care over a period of decades.
The report detailed in shocking detail, the scale of physical, sexual and emotional abuse suffered by children in institutions run by a range of Catholic Orders but which were funded and inspected by the Department of Education.
Abuse was reported by over 1,000 men and women in over 200 residential settings between 1914 and 2000.
The settings included industrial and reformatory schools, children’s homes, hospitals, national and secondary schools, day and residential special needs schools, foster care and a small number of other residential institutions, including Magdalene laundries.
The report identified some 800 known abusers.
The report concluded that physical and emotional abuse were features of the institutions examined while sexual abuse “occurred in many of them” — in particular boys’ institutions.
It found that the Department of Education had a “deferential and submissive attitude” towards the congregations that ran the institutions to the extent that it compromised its ability to carry out its statutory duty of inspection and monitoring of the schools.
The report shocked the nation and made headlines around the world. It had taken 10 years to get to that point.
There had been a number of media revelations relating to child abuse in the 1990s — in particular, the Dear Daughter documentary on RTÉ by Louis Lentin in 1996.
The issue of child sexual abuse in Irish institutions was firmly on the public agenda by this point.
Then, on May 11, 1999 the then taoiseach Bertie Ahern issued a formal apology on behalf of the State and its citizens to the victims.
“On behalf of the State and all the citizens of the State, the Government wishes to make a sincere and long overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse, for our collective failure to intervene to detect their pain and to come to their rescue,” he said.
Mr Ahern’s apology wasn’t exactly out of the blue. It came just hours before the final episode of what was to become one of the seminal documentaries ever made in Ireland — RTÉ’s States of Fear.
The documentary by the renowned investigative journalist Mary Raftery fully exposed the scale of physical and sexual abuse suffered by children who passed through Ireland’s industrial school system.
The broadcast caused a national outcry. The ensuing scandal saw demands for a State inquiry made in the Dáil.
Mr Ahern announced that a Commission of Inquiry would be set up to investigate the abuse.
He said that “the primary focus of the Commission will be to provide victims with an opportunity to tell of the abuse they suffered in a sympathetic and experienced forum.”
The CICA was formally established on a statutory basis the following year in 2000 and operated through two main strands.
1. A Confidential Committee where victims could relate their experiences in a confidential and private setting.
2. An Investigation Committee where the more pro-active investigative body of work could be carried out and individuals could be compelled to contend.
The CICA was followed up in 2002 with the establishment of the Residential Institutions Redress Board which was tasked with making “fair and reasonable awards” to people who had been abused in industrial schools, reformatories and a range of other institutions.
The CICA was initially headed up by Ms Justice Mary Laffoy. It published two interim reports in May and November 2001.
However, tensions had been growing between the Commission and the Government which eventually culminated in the resignation of Ms Justice Laffoy in September 2003.
Her resignation came just one day after the Government of the day announced the second phase of a review into the Commission’s remit.
The first phase had begun the previous December.
For its part, the Government claimed that, at the then rate of progress, the Commission would not complete its work for up to 11 years and could result in legal fees of up to €200m.
The resignation caused widespread controversy, particularly as Ms Justice Laffoy was scathing of the Government in her resignation letter.
She claimed that “since its establishment, the commission has never been properly enabled by the Government to fulfil satisfactorily the functions conferred on it by the Oireachtas.”
She also pointed to “a range of factors over which the Commission had no control had produced “a real and pervasive sense of powerlessness”.
Ms Justice Laffoy also complained that additional resources sought by the Commission since the previous June had not been made available.
She was replaced by Judge Seán Ryan, who was at the time a senior counsel.
The controversy didn’t end there and came in the form of a controversial deal done between the Government and the 18 religious congregations at the centre of the inquiry.
Further controversy was to follow — a controversy which continues to echo in the present, over a decade later.
The deal was signed in June 2002 — the dying days of the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats coalition.
Signed by the then education minister Michael Woods, it was finalised after the dissolution of the 28th Dáil and before the new Dáil had met.
As a result, it was carried out without any public scrutiny and without a vote in the Oireachtas.
The details of the deal were hugely controversial. Under the agreement, the religious congregations were granted indemnity against all legal claims in return for €128m in cash and property.
To date, the total liability incurred by the taxpayer is over €1.5bn.
In short, the deal opened the State up to unlimited liability while the liability attached to the religious congregations was effectively scrapped in return for a financial contribution which subsequently emerged to be far short of what would be required.
For example, the following year, in a scathing report, the Comptroller and Auditor General put the bill at €1bn.
It also revealed that during negotiations on the indemnity deal, not a single government department did a forensic analysis on the exposure of the State with regard to the agreement.
Following the publication of the Ryan Report in 2009, the congregations offered a further €352m. As of last year, just €253m of the total €480m pledged has been transferred to the State.
The circumstances surrounding the indemnity deal remain controversial to this day.
Just last month, in an RTÉ documentary, the then attorney general Michael McDowell said the State “effectively signed a blank cheque” in agreeing to the deal.
The Ryan Report was finally published on May 20, 2009 and made headlines around the world and shocked the nation.
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All those Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes and Industrial Schools should be classed as Potential Crime Scenes? The Devils Buildings should be fully investigated for more shallow graves then burned down by the survivors and their families themselves! The religious orders used shallow graves to insure that survivors are disrespected even after they have been murdered by the devils disguised as nice people. Innocent vulnerable children beaten and starved to death by evil scum of the world!
National College of Ireland in ‘active discussions’ with council over former Magdalene Laundry site
THE NATIONAL COLLEGE of Ireland is in ongoing discussions with Dublin City Council regarding the former Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott-Street understands.
The council said it is consulting stakeholders and “interested parties”, including NCI, at the moment over the future of the site, the last such laundry to close in the State.
It’s understood discussions between the council and the college, located on Mayor Street in the IFSC, have been ongoing for several weeks with a view to using part of the former convent for educational purposes.
The redevelopment of the site on Dublin’s Sean McDermott Street has been a talking point for several years. Last year, councillors rejected the site’s sale to a Japanese hotel chain Toyoko Inn after a campaign led by Social Democrat councillor Gary Gannon.
The council, which is looking for a partner to develop the whole site, said it has “previously considered the use of the chapel [attached to the convent] for artistic, educational and community purposes as very suitable for this building”.
However, the council has “no plans” to apply for state funding for a memorial for Magdalene Laundry survivors.
One recommendation from the May 2013 report by Justice John Quirke on compensation for the Magdalene women was that an appropriate memorial be built at the Sean McDermott Street site.
Social Democrat councillor Gary Gannon, who said the site could be used for educational purposes, argues that the State should help fund a memorial, as promised by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil in 2013.
“It is a grotesque tribute to the hypocrisy of this State that no funding has yet being provided to develop such a memorial,” Gannon told
“Apologies prove hollow when the State reneges upon its promises to build lasting memorials in the hope that society will forget the suffering that was allowed to happen in our country. It make us cowards.”
The laundry was the last to close in Ireland in 1996 and was demolished by the council in 2005 following a fire.
As part of the recently drafted ‘Dublin Agreement’ – which sets out council policy and plans for the next five years – councillors have set out a plan to develop the space as a multipurpose ‘Site of Conscience’.
Magdalene Laundries operated across the state ostensibly as rehabilitation centres for women who became pregnant outside of marriage, women with mental disabilities or homeless women.
Only in recent years has the State tried to make amends for the incarceration of women and for the abuse and punishment meted outed by religious orders to the women who worked in the laundries.
Survivors Who Stand Together will stand the test of time.
We will hold the Irish government accountable for survivors and their families future.
We are currently in communications with the department of education and office of the Taoiseach.
The coming weeks and months will be very interesting. The talking will be over and we will see what actions are taken to better the future of survivors and their families. ☘️
I will not bend, I will not fold, and my truths will not go untold.
I’m a failure of Government failures, I’m a reject attached to a bad name, I’m an object in the public domain, and I’m a Survivor to our Governments shame.
It wasn’t me it wasn’t you. If anyone only knew?
I don’t belong, I don’t believe, because I’ve been so badly deceived.
Days turn to weeks, months turn to years, memories of my lost life reduces me to tears with so many scars and so many fears I am not looking forward to the coming years.
Will I never mend and how will it all end?
Lights at end of tunnels only exist on motorways with traffic flying and reality’s dying the futures not hard to see.
I’m a Survivor with the government to blame. I should be a citizen without stigma and shame.
Government rejects blame by showing no actions for our suffering, misery, loss, agony and our undue pain.
Day and night survivors must never give up their fight. I laugh I cry i always manage to get by because I am a survivor and that’s the reason why we fight to the end and then we die.
Lost life will never return and government departments will never learn.
History will be repeated by the so called experts.
More generations will suffer in despair due to the fact that the Irish government won’t listen because they don’t care!
Author;
© Cathriona Barker
Self Educated Survivor
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27th/ September / 2019
Survivors Who Stand Together