Bruton says review to start soon as agency paying survivors of abuse condemned

A review of Caranua will start shortly, the Minister for Education said on Wednesday as the agency charged with making award payments to institutional abuse victims was sharply criticised in the Dáil.

TDs criticised the agency for paying more than €50,000 to date in rent for its OPW-managed offices from the survivors' fund. Richard Bruton said Caranua's board "is independent and has to arrange its own accommodation and it must meet the costs for that accommodation from its own resources", as was stated in the legislation.

Independent TD Catherine Connolly described Caranua as a classic example "of an institution becoming more important than the people it is meant to serve".

She said it had failed a large number of applicants, adding to their abuse through negative treatment and poor delivery of service.

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She pointed to a number of serious and unacceptable breaches of the legislation relating to the €110 million fund, the high turnover of staff and the contracts signed without the knowledge of the Minister.

Received nothing

Many TDs complained that some survivors who applied more than three years ago had still received nothing.

Ms Connolly highlighted the €800,000 a counselling service Towards Healing expected to receive from the funding, the €2 million spent on private companies and the more than €100,000 spent on rent taken from the fund.

Mr Bruton acknowledged that there were genuine concerns that needed to be addressed including a stronger charter and “good practices”.

But he said the portrayal of the agency by TDs “as if they were trying to protect their monies for some selfish reason to prevent money from being disbursed and to put obstacles in their way” did not represent what Caranua was trying to do.

“I don’t doubt there were individual experiences where people came back very dissatisfied” and he said some people did not have an ease of dealing with bureaucracy and they “felt abused”.

But he said “we have established requirements on how money is spent and that has to be observed by any board that is dealing with public money”.

Rectified

Mr Bruton also acknowledged concerns about issues for survivors from the UK who might not have been aware of the scheme or had difficulty accessing it. He said Caranua had public guidelines for survivors outside Ireland. “I recognise there are groups that may not have been reached” and that that would be rectified.

“I will draw the attention of Caranua to the debate we have had because there is a genuine attempt to improve and meet the needs” of survivors.

And he said a new board with a broad mix of experience was being established.

Ms Connolly was introducing a private member’s motion calling for an immediate review of its operations, including eligibility criteria and a new survivor-led customer charter as well as establishing a system of appropriate oversight.

Ms Connolly said then education minister Ruairí Quinn had promised a review within two years of the establishment in 2013 of the fund, but since then “we have had two more ministers for education and a review still has not been carried out of an organisation that has lurched from crisis to crisis”.

She said the organisation was overwhelmed by the 2,134 applications it initially received even though up to 15,000 were expected.