Click the title below to read speeches made by various speakers in the Dáil
Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Bill 2012: Second Stage Tuesday, 8 May 2012

It is important to say at the outset that the State and the Government continue to fail the women and children of the Magdalene Laundries and Bethany Home. It is to the great shame of the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party that they have done nothing to right the wrong perpetrated against these women and children despite having been so critical of the previous Government’s inaction when in opposition.

The current Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, said in 2010 that former residents of the Magdalene Laundries and Bethany Home must be included in the redress scheme. She went on to criticise the then Minister for Education and Skills for failing to allow these institutions to be included in the list of qualifying institutions for redress. She went on to say that for her, and I quote, it “was becoming clearer and clearer that these institutions were, to all intents and purposes places of detention, and that as such, “residents” were effectively sentenced by servants of the state, to periods of confinement therein”. The Labour Party Minister of State, when in opposition at the time, concluded her outrage with a demand for Government to do the right thing. She was correct to do so.

If we go further back to 2005, the Minister’s party colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O’Sulliven, rightly described the scandal surrounding Bethany Home as a matter of national importance. In the same year the Minister of State, Deputy Joe Costello, called on the Government to include Bethany Home in the redress scheme. All three of those Labour Party Deputies are now Ministers of State – they are part and parcel of this Government. During their years on the opposition benches they all shouted loudly against the decision by the Fianna Fáil led Government to exclude the Magdalene Laundries and Bethany Home from the redress scheme. They were right to do so, but I have to ask where are they today? What is the point of being in Government if one does not act against the very injustices that so exercised one when in opposition?

Just yesterday the Justice for Magdalene’s group released new evidence of 38 women and children having been committed to the Magdalene Laundries by the State. In one case, a girl – a child – of just 14 years of age was sent to High Park for two years in 1930 for perjury. As recently as 1983 an unnamed girl – a child – of 15 years of age was committed to the Good Shepherd Convent in Cork for theft. I could go on.

Over the last week criticism has been correctly levelled at the Roman Catholic Church by people on Government and Opposition benches. It is important in the course of this debate to remind ourselves that the State equally has a case to answer. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, said when in opposition that there was irrefutable evidence that the State was, as he put it, “directly complicit” in the confinement of these women and children. The evidence is there – we all know this – and it should not be the case that groups like Justice for Magdalenes or Bethany Home survivor, Derek Leinster, have to keep fighting this fight. Religious orders fundamentally abused their position within Irish society but the State was culpable too. Both must step up, accept responsibility and provide survivors and their families with the redress, supports and services that they now need.

The Bill legislates for the provision of support to people who suffered the most grievous abuse within State and church-run institutions. These institutions, instead of providing a safe haven and secure environment for children and young people, were often places where the most sadistic cruelty was inflicted. The legacy of the religious orders in these institutions is one of sexual, physical and mental abuse. The State compounded the pain and damage to our most vulnerable children by its decision to turn a blind eye to what was happening.

There are differing views on what are the best ways to compensate and support victims of church and State institutional abuse. Each opinion must be listened to and considered. The State must be humble in its response. It failed these people before and it cannot do so again. The Government needs to do much more than provide a sympathetic ear for those who have raised concerns about aspects of the Bill. Everything possible must be done to ensure the victims of abuse receive just recompense.

It seems wrong to have to reduce this debate so quickly to pennies and pence. I do not know that any of us can put a price on assisting survivors and their families to put their lives back together. Last week, a gentleman on the radio spoke about the need to move on. He spoke of wanting to apologise to his former partners for the difficulties in their relationships due to the abuse perpetrated against him as a child while in State care. My heart broke for this man. How can we put a price on giving him whatever support or redress he needs to move on?

The cost of redress is expected to reach €1.36 billion, and the religious orders need to pay up. Holding back on these moneys is creating additional hurt among victims and this is a situation the Government must address firmly and clearly. I have very serious concerns about the fund’s eligibility criteria, which is to be confined to those who received an award from the redress board or compensation following a court decision or settlement. Those who have not received redress to date will be blocked from accessing the fund and as a consequence the State will have failed them yet again.

It is important to note that 40% of the applications made to the redress scheme were by former residents living outside the State. The implications of the abuse they suffered impacted on their education, leaving many illiterate and some destitute. Far too often we hear of now elderly former residents of these institutions who have struggled to integrate themselves into their communities and now live a life of poverty, some in Britain or the US. All they want in life is to return home to Ireland to live out what remains of their lives. However, no provision has been made for them. In this context we are concerned about the Government’s intention to end funding outreach services once the statutory fund is established. I appeal to the Minister to reconsider this. Medical insurance is a real problem for survivors living in the US and Canada, as are nursing and residential care. In what way does the Government and the State intend to support their needs? Consideration must also be given to the views of some former residents who believe the distribution of the available money should be paid directly to survivors in lump sums.

Campaigner Paddy Doyle has noted the vast majority of former residents posting comments on his website are opposed to the statutory fund. Unlike the redress scheme, which provided financial compensation, the new fund will provide for a range of services instead. When we consider how the State failed survivors as children it is understandable they would now not trust the Government to decide on their behalf what their wants and needs are. It cannot go unsaid that the redress scheme itself was for many a truly awful experience. Sean Leonard of Justice and Healing for Institutional Abuse has noted the legal fraternity made a fortune out of the redress scheme. He states survivors were poorly treated when interacting with Departments. We must learn from this.

There has been, rightly, collective outrage against Cardinal Seán Brady’s failure to tell parents that their children were being abused by, or in danger of being abused by, Fr. Brendan Smyth. Many of us have read with horror the questioning by the church that survivor Brendan Boland had to endure at just 14 years of age. For many the redress board process was an equally cold and harsh experience. Lessons must be learned from this.

Councillor Sally Mulready, chair of the London Irish Women’s Survivors Support Group has said applicants to the redress board who were rejected on the grounds of being late should not be excluded and I agree with her. We have been told the funds supports will include access to counselling services, health care provision, housing needs and education. We need to ensure these services and supports will be adequately resourced and delivered. The Minister has also said the fund will promote understanding of the effects of abuse on former residents among service providers and will evaluate the effectiveness of the approved services in meeting the needs of former residents. In all honesty I question the capacity of the Government to deliver on this commitment, and I feel very sure that many survivors equally question it.

Child victims of sexual abuse whose cases have been taken up by the State can wait several months before even the most basic counselling services are provided. Often their families receive no counselling whatsoever. Last month the HSE revealed that approximately 178,000 people are on outpatient waiting lists to be seen by a consultant after referral by a GP. Tens of thousands of citizens have been waiting years for housing and may never in their lifetime move off the housing waiting list. The Government plans to cut a further 37,000 public sector jobs, so how can we guarantee and reassure victims and survivors that their needs will be met?

Christine Buckley of the Aislinn Centre has noted enhanced access to counselling services and education have greatly reduced recidivism but so much more is needed. Access is important but, in equal measure, so also is the time involved in accessing the supports and services. In many instances we are dealing with very elderly people who require urgent assistance. There is the reasonably held view that many of these services are already available to people as a matter of right, meaning the benefits of the statutory fund will be minimal. This is a point that should be made. Paddy Doyle, whom I mentioned earlier, has also noted that as survivors get older, their needs change, particularly when their levels of mental health and mobility deteriorate. As a result, some survivors will have greater needs than others yet it is unclear how the board will deal with these changing needs and, in some cases, imbalances.

The fund should have provision to pay for the education requirements of children whose parents were the victims of abuse. This can be an important step in breaking the cycle of inter-generation hardship that can be directly attributed to institutionalised abuse. John Kelly of the Irish branch of Survivors of Child Abuse, SOCA, has suggested the introduction of a universal card scheme whereby each survivor would get credits and these could be conferred to a family member.

The legislation must also examine how the awarding of assistance will affect residents of the Six Counties and Britain whose benefits are means tested and must be protected. Children of survivors will be excluded from accessing services as provided for in the Bill. This is a mistake.

Full access to education and counselling are critical components to breaking a cycle that began with the State’s failure to protect our vulnerable children.

A former resident of an industrial school in County Kerry wrote last month in a letter to The Irish Times of wanting to give her children what she had been denied, an education. This woman’s right to education was denied by the State. Her father was also a survivor of an industrial school and both her parents were illiterate. She described how her son has achieved 11 honours in his junior certificate – a bright lad – but now she worries that the family will not be in a financial position to send him to college. Perhaps, in an even worse indictment against this Government, the young lad is considering leaving school so he can help support his family, as his mother’s community employment Scheme will end in November and the family’s income will be reduced. The letter concluded by saying that education is the passport to ensuring that the family’s cycle of deprivation and social welfare dependency does not continue. This is a position of common sense and dignity, and I urge the Government to adopt it and listen to the words and needs of this woman.

Speaking in the Dáil in 2009, the Minister, Deputy Quinn, said: “No words of mine or of anybody else in the House can undo the damage, harm or hurt caused to and which continues for those people. However, the actions that we take can make some redress to them, their children and their children’s children”. He went on to charge the then Fianna Fáil Government for having “let free the horrendous record of the Department of Education and Science that continues to the present day”. He put it to the Minister that there was a continuing culture of deferment and obedience to the Roman Catholic Church and its religious orders in the then Department of Education and Science that had frustrated getting answers to the most simple questions.

I believe the Minister spoke with integrity on that occasion. Now, he is in charge and is making the decisions. He cannot afford to get it wrong. Of all the matters raised in the course of this debate and on Committee Stage, the issues of eligibility and ensuring the State, in the most fulsome way, recognises the damage done to victims and survivors and compensates them in the fullest way must be clearly guaranteed and underwritten in the legislation. I do not believe that is yet the case. The issue of means testing the provision of services to any of the victims or survivors must be clarified. Survivors must have the comfort of knowing that they will have access to properly resourced services, with no impediment put in their way by the State.

Now that he is in the Government, does the Minister have the same courage he displayed when he was in the Opposition? I hope he does. The victims, survivors, their families and their communities need a full resolution from the Minister. That is the least all of us owe them. I commend them for their efforts. I hope the Minister has listened to our words and that we can constructively fashion the legislation to meet all those needs.

By Jenny McCartney
It has become a painfully self-evident truth – surely, even to the silent onlookers at the Vatican – that the longer Cardinal Seán Brady stays in place as Primate of All Ireland, the greater the damage inflicted on the reputation of the Catholic Church in Ireland and beyond. This is not simply because his presence has become a reminder of the cover-up of paedophile abuse by priests, but also because it illustrates a continuing problem: that, after all this time, Cardinal Brady just doesn’t get it.
By “get it” I mean that he still seems to believe that he personally behaved appropriately in the circumstances by which the late Father Brendan Smyth, a rapacious paedophile of almost unimaginable moral corruption, was tacitly permitted by the Church to continue brutally abusing children for 40 years, long after the ecclesiastical authorities knew what he was up to.
As set out in last week’s BBC2 documentary This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church, Father (as he then was) Brady was a 36-year-old canon lawyer who was brought in – along with two other priests – to investigate the case of Brendan Boland, a 14-year-old boy who had come forward to expose Fr Smyth as his abuser since the age of 11. Boland supplied names and addresses of other boys and girls who had been abused in similar fashion, and Father Brady contacted one of those boys.
Both Boland and the other boy were required to sign a formal oath of secrecy forbidding them to tell anyone except “authorised priests” what had gone on, and Fr Brady compiled two reports which were sent further up the Church hierarchy. The parents of none of the five children identified by Boland were informed of what had happened: indeed, Smyth continued to abuse two of those very children after the 1975 inquiry, and went on to rape and bugger a number of their younger siblings and cousins as well. I apologise for the explicit language, but evil found its hiding place in euphemism for too long.
The gist of Cardinal Brady’s modern-day argument is that mistakes were made, but that it was primarily the fault of Smyth’s superiors in the Norbertine Order, and that he did everything in his power at the time. He said in response to the documentary: “I had absolutely no authority over Brendan Smyth. Even my bishop had limited authority over him.” And it is in those two words “no authority” that you can hear the tolling bell for a lost conscience.
The Sunday Telegraph 6th May 2012

IRELAND’S most senior cleric Cardinal Sean Brady said today his role in a 1975 investigation into paedophile Brendan Smyth had been exaggerated.

The Primate faced renewed demands to resign after it emerged a then 14-year-old victim of Smyth`s warned him in secret interviews that it was likely the late priest was abusing five other named children.

The Cardinal said his role in the inquiry has been deliberately exaggerated and misrepresented in a BBC documentary aired last night.

“I deeply regret that those with the authority and responsibility to deal appropriately with Brendan Smyth failed to do so, with tragic and painful consequences for those children he so cruelly abused,” he said.

Cardinal Brady has the backing of Dermot Clifford, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly and the Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Cloyne, who said there is no reason for him to quit.

The Vatican’s chief investigator, Monsignor Charles J Scicluna, also insisted that Cardinal Brady has no case to answer and fulfilled his duties by referring information on child abuse to his seniors.

Three years ago, when explosive allegations about Cardinal Brady’s role in the canon inquiry into Smyth emerged, he said he would resign if he found his actions or failings had led to another child being abused.

Amid the renewed calls for his resignation, Cardinal Brady, who interviewed two of Smyth’s young victims under a special canon oath while a 33-year-old priest, said he regretted that the Church’s response in the 1970s was so inadequate.

“I was shocked, appalled and outraged when I first discovered in the mid-1990s that Brendan Smyth had gone on to abuse others,” he said.

“With others, I feel betrayed that those who had the authority in the Church to stop Brendan Smyth failed to act on the evidence I gave them. However, I also accept that I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the Church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past.”

New evidence came to light which revealed Cardinal Brady had the names and addresses of children who were suspected of being abused, during the secret canon inquiry.

The Primate’s role has been described by the Church as a note-taker, purely administrative, to pass the information on to his superiors. The youngsters’ parents were not informed.

Some children were abused by Smyth for years after the probe.

Brendan Boland, who had been abused during the 1970s, gave the secret inquiry a list of other children he believed were victims.

“There was a boy from Belfast, I gave his name and address,” said Mr Boland in the documentary.

“A girl from Belfast, I gave her name and address. A girl from Cavan, I gave her name and address. Another boy from Cavan, I gave his name and address. And there was another boy who was his friend.”

In a lengthy statement, Cardinal Brady said he did not lead any investigation into Smyth but had been asked by his then superior, the late Bishop Francis McKiernan of Kilmore, to assist senior clerics.

The Cardinal said he did not ask the teenager any questions but later carried out an interview with one of the other named victims to corroborate evidence. He said he had received no training.

He also claimed that, as a priest, he would not be considered responsible for reporting the allegations under today’s rules.

“I had absolutely no authority over Brendan Smyth. Even my Bishop had limited authority over him. The only people who had authority within the Church to stop Brendan Smyth from having contact with children were his Abbot in the Monastery in Kilnacrott and his Religious Superiors in the Norbertine Order.”

He said he assumed and trusted the abbot would have dealt decisively with Smyth.

Cardinal Brady added: “I had no such authority to act and even by today’s guidance from the State, I was not the person who had the role of bringing the allegations received to the attention of the civil authorities.

“I was also acutely aware that I had no authority in Church law in relation to Brendan Smyth or any other aspect of the inquiry process.”

Cardinal Brady also addressed his future and comments he made in 2009 when he said he would resign if his actions led to other children suffering abuse.

He said this remark related specifically to the responsibility of management or of clerics in authority.

“I gave this answer in response to a question specifically about someone in a position of ‘management’, someone who was already a bishop or religious superior with ultimate responsibility for managing a priest against whom an allegation has been made,” the Cardinal said.

“In 1975, I was not a bishop. I was not in that role.”

The Cardinal said the BBC documentary had been misleading in its reporting of his role in the inquiry, his response to further revelations from victims and whether he would consider resigning.

The programme revealed Mr Boland had witnessed one boy being abused and was told by another that he had been a victim as well.

In 1975, Cardinal Brady was a priest and a teacher in Co Cavan when he was sent to support the investigation into sex abuse claims.

Details of the church inquiry were unearthed previously, but the fact that Cardinal Brady had names and addresses of possible victims only emerged in the latest documentary.

Archbishop Clifford said the cardinal had no reason to step down.

“I don’t see any reason why he should resign. He did what he was asked to do as a young priest of 33 years, and he made his report,” the archbishop said.

“We are also speaking about a different generation. When asked to do something by your bishop, you did it and the responsibility lay with him.”

Late last year Cardinal Brady offered to apologise in person to Mr Boland following an undisclosed out-of-court settlement over the abuse.

Mr Boland has said he first confided in a young priest after two years of abuse. He was then interrogated by two clerics, with the then Fr Brady taking notes, in an Ecclesiastical Court, and had to swear on oath that he would not talk about the interview with anyone but an authorised priest.

The Church has since claimed the oath was designed to protect the child and prevent his evidence being manipulated by Smyth.

The Vatican press office declined to comment and referred the matter to the Church in Ireland.

Later, the Cardinal added that he had considered his future but decided the controversy was not a resigning matter.

Looking back, he said he felt he had been operating in a culture of deference and maybe unhelpful silence.

“I knew chapter and verse of what was going on,” the Cardinal said,

“I did not have the awareness now that I have of the impact that was having on the children.

“I was teaching boys of that age at that time every day of the week. I believed Brendan Boland and I took on board what he said and I did what I thought was most effective in stopping this terrible abuse by referring it to the man who had the power to curb the movement of Brendan Smyth.

“I trusted that that would take place.”

- Ed Carty  Irish Independent.

MONDAY, 30 APRIL 2012 18:15

SURVIVORS of institutional abuse are calling for the reopening of The Redress Board and for more transparency on plans for a €110 million trust fund. The Right of Place/Second Chance Group believes that many people were not ready to come forward to the Board and apply for compensation while it was open, but they may now want to do so. In its recently published annual report, the group also called on the government to publish plans for the trust fund contributed to by 18 religious congregations. Right of Place/Second Chance Outreach Co-ordinator for HSE West, Val Groarke, said the group is worried that the government are dragging their feet in coming up with criteria for recipients of the fund.
He urged the government to supplement the fund on an annual basis to allow survivors who have not yet come forward, to access it.
“I believe that there are a lot of people out there who didn’t get the redress,” Mr. Groarke told the Limerick Post.
“Because the government had it shut down, we’re pushing for them to reopen it and leave it open for another few years.
“Just because some of us were ready, it doesn’t mean that everyone was”.
He said that while some survivors of institutional abuse in Limerick may have received compensation from the Redress Board, the damage inflicted continues to resonate.
Mr. Groarke also called for the children of survivors to be able to access the Trust fund, explaining that what happened to survivors also affected the quality of lives of their families.
The Galway/Limerick and western offices of the support group were contacted by clients 693 times from March 2011 to February 2012, and in one-fifth of these incidents, approaches were made by the dependent of a survivor.
“Money doesn’t give you back what you lost, like an education,” Mr. Groarke continued.
“A huge amount of our people have not worked for most of their lives and a lot would have got ‘low class’ jobs.
“A lot of survivors wouldn’t be able to read or write”.
Right of Place offers outreach and support to survivors in education, health, housing, employment, welfare, social issues and much more.
“If they have a problem we want them to know that there is a service here. They can just lift the phone”.
The Right of Place Limerick office is based in the Friends of the Elderly premises Carey’s Road, and is open to anyone who wishes to avail of its support
Meetings are held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and are open to all to call in for a cup of tea and a chat.

The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn T.D., today welcomed the publication of Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Bill which provides for the establishment of a Statutory Fund to support the needs of survivors of residential institutional child abuse.

The Minister said: “15,000 former residents are expected to be eligible to apply for support from the Fund and every effort is being made to minimise the administration involved.”

“Some former residents advocate a simple distribution of the available money. However, I believe that the Fund should target resources at services to support former residents’ needs, such as counselling, psychological support services and mental health services, health and personal social services, educational services and housing services.”

While the Residential Institutions Redress Board provides financial compensation to those who suffered abuse while resident in the institutions, the new Statutory Fund will focus on meeting specified needs that many survivors have as they struggle with the effects of abuse that may have taken place many years ago.

The Fund will be financed from the cash contributions, of up to €110 million, offered by the religious congregations. To date, contributions of €21.05 million have been received from the congregations towards the Fund.

Minister Quinn said: “The Government believes that the costs of the response to residential abuse should be shared on a 50:50 basis, between the taxpayer and those responsible for managing the institutions where horrendous child abuse took place.”

“I am continuing to pursue the 50:50 division with the management bodies involved and have proposed the transfer of school infrastructure to the State for the benefit of the taxpayer as one mechanism to allow those involved the opportunity to shoulder their share of the costs.”

“It is my hope that this new Fund will provide ongoing support to those who suffered as children in residential care in State supervised institutions. We have let these people down in the past. I am determined that we will not fail them again. I intend to proceed as quickly as possible with the enactment of the legislation so as to establish the Fund at the earliest possible date,” Minister Quinn concluded.

The Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Bill 2012 and the Explanatory Memorandum are available on the Oireachtas website:

The Residential Statutory Trust Fund Bill

FOREWORD by
Bruce Arnold
I was an onlooker to the events that gave birth to this book. I knew the authors when we were all students and married one of them. Our children grew up knowing one of the principal characters; we know much of her life story, and that of her children and grandchildren. All of them have been marked by the dire ineptitude of the supposed care and charity bestowed on her by the Order of the Poor Clares.
When the events covered in the early chapters of this book were revealed to us, bit by bit, their chilling message was deeply impregnated with a sense of isolation and secrecy. We knew what had happened to her and to other members of her family, and we knew the story of others whose childhood life she had shared. What we did not know was the extent to which the experiences of the young girls in St Joseph’s Orphanage in Cavan town represented a tiny part of a system that was spread throughout the length and breadth of the country. Thousands of children were incarcerated over many decades. They were given what were in effect long prison sentences by the courts under legislation that was severely interpreted and even more severely backed up by the Church, the social workers who were supposedly caring for young deprived and disadvantaged children. Those committed to the industrial school and orphanage system had one thing in common: the period of their confinement ended, usually, at age sixteen. Some had been in institutional care since they were infants.
This book researched into other aspects that also had a common character of a very unhappy and, from the State’s point of view, shameful
• ix •
Mavis Arnold and Heather Laskey
background. Almost universally throughout the industrial school system— which, at its most extensive, had several thousand boys and girls in what would now be called “care”—the administration of the children’s needs was seriously defective. They were always hungry, malnourished, and in some cases they literally starved. It has been said by the religious orders which managed these places that “times were hard”. This was emphasised in the context of times being hard generally in the country, through poverty, from the 1930s to the 1960s. It was not so. The State’s subvention, on a per capita basis, was adequate to feed, clothe, house, heat and give health care to the inmates. It also provided sufficient for educational and craft skills to be taught.
It was rarely done. There were exceptions, but they prove the rule that in reality the money disappeared. Startling tales are told by men and women who went through the system of the loaded tables of the religious, the disposal of waste to pig farms, while the children remained hungry. One of the worst examples has been published. This was the Baltimore School in Cork. It came directly under the Bishop of Ross, now dead, and it was examined in horrifying detail by Judge Mary Laffoy, head of the Commission to Investigate Child Abuse. Children who had serious eye defects so that they could not follow the limited teaching they got but never saw an optician. They did not possess toothbrushes. They were never seen by a dentist. They slept on foul bedding and contracted diseases from vermin. Their education, seriously inadequate, equipped them only for the most menial of jobs. And there is evidence that this led to further abuse and also to exploitation of a brutal and horrifying kind.

Revised edition of Children of the Poor Clares.

This applies to the girls of St Joseph’s as much as to the rest of them. And it is wrong.
When Children of the Poor Clares first appeared I was immensely proud of what my wife and our friend, Heather Laskey, had achieved. It had the simple appeal of what I saw as careful, objective truth. It was and is a poignant picture of a dark set of experiences that paint a terrible picture of a hidden Ireland, brutal, cruel and covert. This much-revised, updated and extended version enriches the story and adds greatly to our knowledge of what has happened since in an ongoing saga. But it still leaves the story unfinished. It will never be finished. The pain and damage to these men and women, many of whom have long since passed on, many of whom are still wrestling with the memories and the nightmares, are a shameful extract from living history. The State still has not dealt with them fairly. It has not drawn them in nor healed their suffering. And anyone who thinks otherwise has only to take up this book and read the truth.
Bruce Arnold, a political journalist with the ‘Irish Independent’’ is the author of 21 books including political biographies and novels. His book The Irish Gulag: How the State Betrayed its Innocent Children was published by Gill & Macmillan in 2009.

Right Of Place is registered as a charity but runs itself as a private company.

Accounts ending 2010, prove again how far they have fallen or risen depending on the moral and financial fibre of the optics involved.
That year they received €423,850 on duplicate funding from the HSE and the Department of Education and still is a mystery as to why. A spokesman for the HSE states (every year) that they are investigating Right OF Place, yet they still received €260,000 from the Government in 2011.

Over 34 million euro has been given to other
survivors’ groups in total; Right Of Place though tops them all in terms of absurdity. Almost none of this money ever reached survivors except choice morsels to keep a select few followers on board to help give the appearance of legitimacy. This is always the real tragedy.

Right Of Place claimed to have visited 1000 people in their own homes; to represent over 1500 survivors; to have been contacted 5,393 times last year alone, yet it said last year: ‘it had no idea where over 3 million
euro of taxpayers money had gone, who gave them personal donations, or who they ever actually even helped. They also received lottery funding and strong
armed religious organizations such as: The Sisters Of Mercy, Brothers Of Charity, The Sisters Of Charity, the Rosminians and others for more money.

When a nun named Maris Mc Guinness from
St Columbus Convent in Cork asked them what happened to the €20,000 her order gave them, she never even got a reply. The gross amount of these personal donations alone is close to €300,000, and yet still, this Right Of Place rumbles on and corrupts too the real sincerity and honesty of Institutional survivors’ pain and suffering.
Tom Cronin, a founding member of Right Of Place in 1999, has been calling for Government investigation into its affairs from 2006 and has been met with largely deaf ears ever since. What is now at stake is the Statutory Funding and Right of Place sees this as their next meal
ticket, as well do many other survivor group leaders who only lead and feed themselves. The question now is: what are you going to do about it?

To help you, please leave your details here or
nominate a third party of contact. We are here only to make sure that this never happens again, and we all get to go home with a little more currency in our pocket that reflects justice. Reflective compensation is our right and guilt only ever should belong to those who abused us; which includes the predatory nature of a select unsavoury minority group who have mandated themselves to speak for us. Let us now voice ourselves with a chorus of loud outrage or forever be weak from bitter outraged silence that falls only on deaf ears.