An amendment to the legislation which set up the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is likely following the latest proposals from its chairman, Mr Justice Ryan.
He is proposing that the right to investigate and identify individual abusers in the final report be removed, so that the work of the Investigation Committee of the commission can proceed.
This proposal, contained in a detailed position paper, will be discussed by the various interested parties over the next two weeks. The commission will hold public hearings of their views from May 24th to 28th.
It will make its decision on the proposal on June 16th, two weeks before the Supreme Court is due to decide on an appeal by the Christian Brothers. They had challenged a High Court decision upholding the way the Investigation Committee worked.
If the commission decides to end the policy of "naming and shaming", it will seek an amendment to the legislation which set up the commission. At the moment it entitles everyone abused in an institution to recount their experiences to both the Confidential Committee or the Investigation Committee. The proposed amendment would remove the latter entitlement. Instead it would hear what witnesses it considered would contribute to its overall picture of abuse.
Mr Justice Ryan's proposal was made to a public meeting of victims and other interested parties yesterday. It followed seven months of work by the Investigation Committee, which he took over, along with the commission, when Ms Justice Laffoy suspended its work last September and resigned.
Since then the committee has recruited additional staff, contacted international experts on child abuse and sought documents. It has also identified "units of inquiry" as the basis for conducting its investigations.
However, Mr Justice Ryan said that, before the commission could go forward, it needed to decide what procedures it would adopt. The issue of identifying people who have committed abuse was central to this.
If people are to be identified, they have the right to be represented and cross-examine complainants, he said. "Approaching the inquiry by examining the individual complaints presents a massive practical and logistical problem. Many complainants would have died before their cases were heard. All the wider questions which are central to the inquiry would inevitably be postponed to a date long into the future and the inquiry might well never get to them."
His proposal would mean that not all complainants to the Investigation Committee, of whom there are 1,712 at the moment, would be heard, he acknowledged. But the Confidential Committee, which hears victims' experiences, but does not make findings, would be open to them. Its accumulated evidence would contribute to the overall report.
Hearings of the Confidential Committee commenced in September 2000, and to date 856 witnesses have been heard. There are 202 more to be heard.
The Investigation Committee hopes to begin its inquiries into specific institutions on July 5th. It will also examine the background to the allegations, including the social and legal environment of the time.
Mr Justice Ryan said his vision of the inquiry was that it could ascribe responsibility for what happened in the past, specifying institutions and identifying failures. "It can make recommendations which will have an impact on the treatment of children in care in our modern times," he said. "Would that not be an achievement which would stand as a tribute to those people who had suffered abuse in institutions in the State?"