The decision of the Government to agree in principle to setting up a compensation tribunal for the victims of institutional child abuse clears the way for the work of the Commission on Child Abuse to go ahead. It also means that victims can at last hope to see some compensation for the suffering they have had to endure.
The commission had reached an impasse because of the reluctance, on two grounds, of about 1,200 victims, represented by several solicitors, to participate in its work. These grounds were that the Department of Education, against which some of them were prosecuting civil claims for damages, was deeply involved in setting up the commission, and that the issue of legal representation had not been resolved.
Last week the chairwoman of the commission, Ms Justice Laffoy, said that the lack of urgency in dealing with these issues was holding up the work of the commission. However the Minister for Education and Science, Dr Woods, told The Irish Times that a document had been prepared two weeks ago on the compensation tribunal issue, and was being circulated to other Departments before being presented as a memorandum to Government. This was done on Tuesday, and the general principle agreed.
This agreement has cleared the way for sorting out both problems identified by the commission. The civil actions will not now be necessary, and if the Department is no longer involved as a hostile party in civil litigation against the victims, the solicitors can deal with it in a different way.
Without the pressure of pending civil actions, both they and the victims can concentrate on the commission.
That the Government has accepted that "abuse" be defined as in the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act means that there will be no distinction between physical and sexual abuse, an issue which had been of concern to many victims.
Nonetheless, some issues remain to be resolved. According to the Minister, Mr Woods, these include the methods of compensation, what other contributions there might be to the fund (notably from the religious orders concerned), and how the tribunal is to be administered.
However, he pointed out that there was an existing body of experience in establishing such tribunals, starting with the Stardust tribunal, in which he was involved as then minister for health, and continuing up to the hepatitis C tribunal.
The speed with which it will come into being is important, as the clock is ticking on the statute of limitations for victims of sexual abuse.
The level of compensation will also be an issue. Ms Justice Laffoy said last week that, if and when it turned to the issue of compensation, the commission would consider whether this should be similar to the kind of damages a court would award if it found in favour of a claimant.
In the hepatitis C compensation tribunal, claimants can appeal to the High Court if they are unhappy with a compensation offer. This is a kind of "control mechanism" which ensures that the compensation offered is similar to that awarded by the courts in similar circumstances.
The nature of the claims likely to be made is already emerging in the civil actions which have been initiated. These include cases where a person's education was cut short, cases in which there was ongoing and continuous psychological damage, other cases in which the damage only emerged later, perhaps when the individual tried to establish an intimate relationship, and cases combining all of these and more.
While it may be difficult to imagine how to compensate a person for inability to establish a relationship, there are precedents in the courts for loss of opportunity, as for other kinds of damage, and the tribunal is likely to rely on them in setting up a framework for paying compensation.
Nonetheless Mr James MacGuill, a solicitor who represents some of the victims, does not expect there to be unfounded claims.
"Being abused in an institution is not a claim you're going to make of yourself lightly," he said. "A lot of people have not even told their partners. There's a perception that people who have been abused go on to be abusers themselves."