The charity ‘Let Our Voices Emerge’ held an AGM last night. While we have always voiced our support for the Religious Congregations through the years, on foot of what we see are unprecedented revelations of records that the Catholic Church covered up and the Leaderships did not reveal to us over the years of our support, while we still stand by the individual managers who were let down by the system,we now withdraw our support of the Religious Congregations.

Through our own experience in the Industrial Schools we came forward in good faith to support the Congregations, we have now discovered our good faith was betrayed.While we still support the individual managers of the schools who struggled against the system. We now call on C.O.R.I. (Conference of Religious Ireland) to revisit their approach to the repayment deal for the R.I.R.B (Residential Institutions Redress Board).

We feel the Catholic Church in Ireland have betrayed not only us, their supporters from the Industrial Schools, but also our fellow inmates. The payments from the R.I.R.B have been decreased from lack of funding. We understand the legal difficulties of the Church increasing it’s payment from the agreed sum on the basis that their responsibility was only as workers in an already evolved system, but we have now discovered that they were guilty of cover up and duplicity in our fellow inmates care.

The Catholic Church holds it’s assets in trust for all of the followers of the Catholic religion. We feel if the Catholic people of Ireland want to make true reparation they should now contact their local bishops and voice their support for the Church increasing the R.I.R.B contribution.

Florence Horsman Hogan.