The Minister for Education has appointed Judge Sean O'Leary as chairman of the Residential Institutions Redress Board. His appointment comes following the sudden resignation of Judge Kieran O'Connor three days after the board was established.
On Monday last the board placed advertisements in the national newspapers asking people who had suffered abuse as children in institutions to contact it. At 11.30 p.m. on Wednesday, Budget night, the Minister for Education issued a press release, jointly with Judge O'Connor, saying he had accepted with regret the resignation of the chairman.
The Residential Institutions Redress Board was set up last April to provide an alternative to court for the victims of institutional child abuse. Those who were abused in residential institutions can apply for compensation on the basis of a scale drawn up by an expert group, which gave weighting in relation to different degrees of abuse.
The amounts of compensation payable vary from under €50,000 for less than 25 on the scale drawn up by the expert group to €300,000 for the most extreme abuse, with the most long-lasting and severe effects marked as 70 on the scale.
The funding allocated to the board in the Estimates for 2002 was €9.3 million. People have three years from the establishment in which to make applications to it.
The board also includes Prof Desmond Greer, Dr Helen Cummiskey and Dr Ruth Pilkington. It has a secretary, a registrar and a legal team, as well as seven administrative staff. Its head office is in Clonskeagh, Dublin.
In the joint press release Judge O'Connor said he had devoted an enormous amount of time to the board over the past eight months and was unable to provide that level of commitment on an ongoing basis. He said he wished the board well and hoped it would be seen as fair in all its dealings with the people who had been injured while in residential institutional care.
Mr Dempsey said in the statement that the judge had agreed to be available to offer any assistance to an incoming chairperson over the next few months.
"I greatly appreciate Judge O'Connor's role in leading he board from its inception to where it now has a framework in place to deal with the applications for financial awards," Mr Dempsey said on Wednesday night.
"Clearly, this involved a substantial amount of legal and organisational work."