Groups acting for victims of abuse at State and religious institutions will be asked in the coming weeks to support plans to remove the obligation on the child abuse inquiry to hear every single allegation, writes Arthur Beesley, Political Reporter.
The proposal not to hear every allegation is the central element of a plan by the inquiry's new chairman, Mr Justice Ryan, to restart the investigation and speed up its work and reduce the potential €1 billion liability faced by the State. Cases will be heard in units, with complaints in respects of particular decades at particular institutions to be heard together.
The Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, accepted for the first time yesterday that the cost to the State of dealing with abuse cases could have been over 1 billion unless changes were made to the working of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. Compensation was estimated at 500 million, and a similar sum would have been incurred, mainly in legal costs, by the commission.
However, the Minister said Mr Justice Ryan's proposals had the potential to significantly reduce the 11-year projection for the inquiry.
Refusing to speculate about when the inquiry might finish its work, he said costs would be reduced if the duration of the inquiry was shortened.
While the Cabinet endorsed on Tuesday the plans to restart the investigation, Mr Justice Ryan warned that outstanding legal challenges to the inquiry would cast uncertainty over its work for "a period of a number of months into 2004". This was due to uncertainty about whether the Christian Brothers will appeal a High Court judgment against their challenge to the inquiry's work.
They have six weeks to decide whether to appeal the updated judgment, which will be delivered today. If there is no appeal, and if the groups acting for abuse survivors endorse the plan, Mr Dempsey said no further Government decision would be required.
The abuse inquiry was suspended in controversial circumstances last September, when a Government review prompted the resignation of Mr Justice Ryan's predecessor, Ms Justice Laffoy. An interim report due in the next fortnight is expected to amplify Ms Justice Laffoy's criticism of the Government management of the investigation. Mr Dempsey has consistently rejected Ms Justice Laffoy's claim that the Government left her powerless to carry out her work and denied her the resources required to expedite the inquiry.
However, he said yesterday the Government was guilty of an error of judgment in mandating the inquiry to investigate every single claim of abuse. Each of the 1,712 complainants whose cases with the inquiry's investigation committee are outstanding will be asked whether they wish their cases to remain in that strand.
Alternatively, they will be able to have their case heard by the inquiry's confidential committee, which would record their stories but not investigate them.
Mr Dempsey said the proposal to hear joint cases was not a variation the "sample-case" model rejected last year by victims' groups. That model, which would have enabled the inquiry to draw inferences about several cases from evidence heard in sample cases, was proposed last year by the Government. Under Mr Justice Ryan's proposal each case would be examined, even if this took place at joint hearings, Mr Dempsey said. To reduce the cost of the inquiry, Mr Justice Ryan's plan also contains provisions for hearings by single committee members instead of groups of members.