People who had suffered physical and mental abuse as children said nobody was listening to them even now because they were excluded from claiming civil damages and from having legal representation on the proposed Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.
A meeting in Dublin of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse at the weekend was attended by more than 100 people who had suffered abuse in institutions in their childhood.
People at the meeting, which was attended by a number of Opposition politicians, but no Government representative, criticised the Statute of Limitations Bill, due before the Seanad on Wednesday. The Bill allows only people who have been sexually abused to seek civil damages.
They also called for the right to have their own legal representatives at the commission.
Mr John Kelly, co-ordinator of Irish SOCA, told the meeting the Government had let them down all the way. It had decided the Bill should exclude childhood survivors of physical and mental abuse from taking civil action. This covered about 80 per cent of people who had been hurt.
The Government had decided to pack that off to the Law Reform Commission. Of the 20 per cent that could take a case, many were automatically statute-barred because they had reported it more than three years ago.
He welcomed the commission but said: "We need to have someone in our corner. It's about us. We take central stage here, not the judge, nor the State as the State is indictable."
Mr Kelly read a letter from a former minister for industry and commerce, Mr Justin Keating, to Irish SOCA which said society should be making amends for what happened, and apologies would not suffice.
Mr Anthony O'Farrell, from SOCA in England, who was in Artane Boys' School as a child, asked: "Where is our legal representation which will take on the voice of the abused? As a child of 10 I wasn't listened to and as a 65-year-old pensioner I'm still not being listened to".
An RTE television journalist, Mary Rafferty, praised the courage of those people who had spoken out. The Bill was deeply wrong and unfair, she said. The effect of physical and emotional abuse was as great as the effects of sexual abuse.
Mr Alan Shatter TD, Fine Gael spokesman on health, hit a raw nerve with the audience when he said there could not be a distinction between abuse that was solely sexual, as many of the abusers got sexual gratification from it.
"Thousands of people in the State were brutalised at the hands of the religious, were beaten, deprived, locked in cellars, deprived of food and in effect tortured . . . and in many cases, the people who perpetrated these abuses were getting sexual gratification out of it," he said.
Mr Shatter said the Statute of Limitations Bill was hypocritical, discriminatory and probably unconstitutional. It was a scandal and an outrage.
Mr Richard Bruton TD, Fine Gael spokesman on education, said one of the weaknesses in the proposed commission was that there was no proposal for ongoing legal representation for victims.
One speaker from the floor referred to the beef tribunal, saying: "There were a few lumps of meat which hadn't got the right stamps, and the Government put up the best lawyers. We're entitled to the same. We're not lumps of meat, although you'd think we are." The Labour TD Ms Roisin Shortall called for support for the terms of the commission.
Prof Michael Jones, who was in Artane in the early 1960s, said he wanted compensation to show they were wrong. "I want something to ensure it ends with this generation".