Report on private records held by religious orders due in near future - Varadkar

The Government is due to receive a report on the retention of private records held by religious orders in the near future, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said.

Mr Varadkar was responding to Independent TD Catherine Connolly during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil on Wednesday, who spoke of the “complete failure of this Government and previous Governments to take action to preserve and protect the records held by various religious organisations in this country”.

Ms Connolly raised a recent Irish Times article by Fintan O’Toole which referenced Tom Wall, a survivor of the Glin industrial school in Co Limerick.

“The issue for me today is in relation to a court case taken by the Christian Brothers against him [Mr Wall] because he has some records that they want back, not to make available to the public, but presumably, to keep, to hide or to destroy, because he’s on record saying he burned previous records on their instructions,” she said.

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Ms Connolly added that “trust” had to be built with survivors by getting the records from religious orders and that “we don’t have them”.

“We owe it to this man, who at 74, is still struggling and being taken to court by the Christian Brothers in 2023,” she said.

“It is just grotesque that decisions haven’t been made, actions taken and the appropriate legislation passed to protect and conserve and make available.”

[ Former Limerick industrial school resident to appeal court order to hand back records to Christian Brothers ]

[ Fintan O’Toole: Giving Christian Brothers ownership of their sordid history adds insult to injury ]

The Galway West TD asked the Taoiseach what “steps, action, legislation” was being proposed in relation to protecting and conserving and “making those documents available to the public”.

In response, Mr Varakdar said work was advanced on a central repository for holding publicly held records. He said when it came to records that are held privately, for example by religious institutions, there was a working group that was established to “examine all of our options on what could be done with regard to preserving and protecting those records”.

Mr Varadkar said the working group was due to report to the Government in the near future and that he would provide Ms Connolly with a more detailed response by the end of the week.

The Fine Gael leader also said there was a distinction between public and private records.

“Public ones are owned by the State, they are in our possession, private records are not,” he said. “But people do have a right to have private records too, even under existing legislation, under data protection legislation and privacy legislation, you have a right to access in some circumstances information about you where it’s held privately.”