The religious orders implicated in allegations made to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse had to provide statements within a reasonable period, the chairwoman warned yesterday. Christine Newman reports
Ms Justice Laffoy granted an application by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Ireland to have time for the submission of statements extended to the end of September.
The chairwoman said religious orders had to deploy resources from other work. The submission of statements had to be done.
"All orders have to deploy resources in-house and employ a realistic number of lawyers. One gets the sense the Oblates have not done that and they have to face up to that and do it," she said.
The rules of the commission had to be complied with and if the Oblates were not in a position to provide statements, they would have to make an application indicating what the difficulties were.
Ms Justice Laffoy said she understood the Oblates wanted to co-operate but if they did not, the commission had a default mechanism.
In making the application for the Oblates to produce documents, Mr Frank Clarke SC, for the commission, said there was a private hearing on March 8th about the delay in submitting statements. He understood there was a certain difficulty in dealing with the matter as one of the Oblates schools closed in 1974. The records were then retained by the Department of Education.
He said a figure of 187 cases was broadly correct. "We are working on the assumption that there are at least 180 cases involving this order," he said.
Mr Clarke said that two-thirds of the statements from complainants had been received and filed.
Mr Conor Maguire SC, for the Oblates, said they had always been anxious to facilitate the inquiry.
It was important from the order's point of view that full statements should be properly put together and fully documented. They had submitted 22 statements and had a total of 24 outstanding. He said they would have the balance in by the end of September.
Following the application, Mr Kevin Feeney SC, for nuns who ran 26 industrial schools, resumed his argument that the lapse of time meant there could not be a finding where there was no evidence on the part of an alleged perpetrator.
"Finding out what really happened becomes increasingly difficult with the lapse of time," he said.
The reputations of existing sisters could be affected by any adverse findings relating to older or deceased members, he said.
Ms Justice Laffoy said the vast majority of their complaints would date prior to 1970.
Mr Feeney said some went back to 1940, so there were a number of cases where the commission could not arrive at a judicial finding, he said.
He said the commission was being asked to test the evidence on whether or not it could prove abuse. Where there was a deceased person, the commission would have exercised an adjudicative function but it would not have been able to do the test.