Cruel gap between promise and delivery

Monday November 29th 2004
When the system of redress for victims of abuse in industrial school was set up, following Bertie Ahern's apology in May 1999, it offered a generous and compassionate approach.

The details were worked out by a committee which was chaired by Sean Ryan. He is now the judge presiding over the Commission on Child Abuse, following Mary Laffoy's resignation last year.

Michael Woods was Minister for Education at the time. In a statement about the committee's conclusion he said one of the most important observations was that the abuse injuries were "among the most serious kinds of personal injury known to the law". Survivors "had lost their childhood - much of their adulthood as well". He also said that because of the impossibility of the complexities of measuring the impact of abuse, the State would obtain its guidelines from the Irish courts.

The courts, in the Government's opinion, would provide the best evidence of "the award likely to be made if, as anticipated in the Bill, an applicant elects to pursue a claim for damages in the High Court".

That was the theory. The practice has been entirely different, and it is due to Tom Sweeney's actions that the huge disparity between the promises and the delivery are being exposed. His is only part of the story.

Far worse has been going on behind the closed doors of the Redress Board, with pitiful awards being made that come nowhere near meeting the criteria given by the Sean Ryan Committee in 2001 or in ministerial statements supporting those criteria.

Nor do these payments measure up to the awards given in abuse cases that have come to court. Almost without exception, these cases, which have mainly come from diocesan abuse circumstances like the Father Fortune assaults in the Ferns diocese, have involved manipulative sexual abuse as opposed to abuse carried out in penal and custodial situations where the victims were totally vulnerable. Nevertheless, very large financial compensations have been granted by the courts. It is difficult to perceive any real relationship between the two.

Nor does the Redress Board system of awards meet with basic principles of natural justice and the requirements for openness in the Convention on Human Rights.

The State has made it as difficult as possible for any case at all to come to the High Court. In Tom Sweeney's own case he was denied legal pleadings through a settlement which changed the purpose of the Redress Act, but only did so in face of his hunger strike.

Reports given to me from Cork, Sligo, Leeds, London and Limerick, all show Redress awards that are at or below the lowest levels proposed by the Sean Ryan Committee, and massively below what would be awarded by the Irish courts. Those who have given this information without attribution are fearful of revealing themselves, both for family reasons and because of the strict penalties imposed by the Redress Act on those who make awards or other details public.

Tom Sweeney has achieved concessions from the Government, though Noel Dempsey, in his May statement, denied this.

The Government decided not to lodge in the High Court the amount of the rejected financial offer from the Board. This is provided for under Section 25 of the Redress Act and was obviously designed as a preventive measure, aimed at blocking recourse to the High Court under the terms of the Act when it fails to satisfy an applicant. The change of approach was directly the result of the pressure from Mr Sweeney's hunger strike. The Government's overriding intent was to bring the matter to a conclusion.

Two other results change the relationship between the Redress Board and the High Court. The first of these is that the Government agreed that Tom Sweeney could go from the Redress Board to the High Court. This was done without having to contest the two versions of his case there before the Board, one giving him ?113,000 the other ?67,000.

The second is the fact that the Government allowed the factual evidence and the accepted findings of the Redress Board to stand as Tom Sweeney's basis for the allowed proceedings in the High Court.

This is of great significance since the architects of the Redress Act had constructed the legislation precisely to avoid this eventuality.

We now have a situation, thanks to Tom Sweeney's hunger strike, where the assessment of damages could be made outside and beyond the structures established under the Act. The government plan had always been that this would be otherwise confined, in secret, to the Board and its Review Committee.

Tom Sweeney had his findings established at the Redress Board but then was allowed to transfer for an assessment of damages in the High Court. In this way he has opened up new directions in which the abused can apply if they are not satisfied with their awards.

The need for this is coming from many who have gone through the process of appeal over the past 18 months. There is substantial dissatisfaction among victims that the Board is not fulfilling the role promised by the government and its ministers during the time leading up to the Redress Act of 2002.

? Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/