The tramp was poking round the dunes at Dollymount when Martin Cluxton came across him. He was a sage, in the best tradition of Irish outsiders. "Sleeping rough is like dining in the Shelbourne," he told young Martin. "You have to be dressed for it."
Martin Cluxton is the fictional hero of a television drama that stunned Irish audiences when RTE first aired it in 1970. It was down and dirty, ringing with the kind of truth that hits you in the belly before it strikes your mind. Exactly two years and two weeks ago, the Taoiseach apologised to people like Martin who suffered from their experiences in reformatories and industrial schools.
Then, Mary Rafferty's States of Fear, another RTE production, stunned the nation to the quick. He speedily appointed Ms Justice Mary Laffoy to chair the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, and it looked as if his Government was genuinely committed in fact and in spirit to delivering what justice it could to the many, maimed survivors.
Martin Cluxton (who was played by the actor Derek Kelly) spent two and a half years in a west of Ireland reform school run by brothers, without setting eyes on his parents. In real life the Kennedy Committee was investigating institutional childcare during exactly the same timeframe.
THE drama dealt mainly with what happened after Martin Cluxton left the school. Martin conformed to the Kennedy Report's description. He was "depersonalised" by his experiences and had "had so little contact with the outside world" he had to relearn it almost from scratch. He couldn't get a job as a mechanic because he was at reform school, and although he concealed his "secret" from a garage owner called McCreevy, Martin lost out again when McCreevy realised he lived in a "bad area".
Under the drama's social polemic - poverty, dependency, uncontrollable fertility - lies a subtext of sexual and physical abuse that could be perpetrated because the children, and many of their families, were powerless. Martin had obviously suffered severe corporal punishment, and perhaps other kinds too.
This week, Ms Justice Laffoy made her interim report on how justice is being delivered to survivors like Martin. It is not, yet. The commission can't proceed properly with its inquiries because it ". . . has been left in the position of not knowing if, or when, the matter of provision for the costs of legal representation would be resolved."
Ms Justice Laffoy says that "despite numerous requests, [the State] failed to come up with a workable payment scheme for lawyers representing the victims and accused. . . " The commission cannot do its job.
The row about who gets what legal representation has been brewing for over a year, so it can't have come as a surprise to Bertie Ahern, John O'Donoghue or Michael Woods. Survivors are understandably cautious in revisiting their experiences, and they took time to accept that the same departments which were responsible for their welfare are now administering the investigation into what took place.
Some of those hurdles were overcome. Seven hundred and fourteen people now want to take part in the commission's work, but as many as 228 won't submit statements to the private hearings because there still isn't a workable legal scheme to protect their interests. Ms Justice Laffoy concludes that the "commission was left in the invidious position of not being able to adequately respond to inquiries from people affected by its work." Her well chosen words don't conceal the potentially scandalous implications.
THE whole abuse and institutional childcare saga since the 1950s has been a cycle of public outrage, political promises - and no final resolution. As in the Jamie Synott case, the Government is speaking with forked tongues. How often must the public be shocked in order for Government to act? Very frequently, it seems, because the cycle relies on the public's memory being as short as a goldfish's.
The abuse sagas then and now are mediated by a middle class sensibility that sees as bad form those who don't or can't play by the rules. The survivors aren't insiders; therefore the system refuses to work for them. Their learned experience of authority was that it couldn't be trusted. When inevitable splits between various representative groups of hurt, sometimes angry survivors happen, the system can close ranks, placing them at one more remove.
The survivors didn't become petty criminals, like Martin Cluxton. Most built courageous lives after so tragic a start in life. A minority were too badly hurt, and died young from resulting diseases such as depression or alcoholism. Hurts felt in childhood last all your life.
It ought be easier for the survivors to gain justice in this Republic than for the tramp in Martin Cluxton to gain admission to the Shelbourne. You shouldn't have to dress for it. Ms Justice Laffoy has blown the whistle on how casually the State is keeping its word to the survivors, and to the public. But the gatekeepers still insist on locking them out.
mruane@irish-times.ie