THE Department of Education was not effective in ensuring a satisfactory level of care for children in industrial and reform schools, the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse (CICA) found.According to the commission, for the schools to work properly the system needed an authoritative overseer, and if the department declined to play such a role then there was no one to do so.
In its assessment of the department of Education, the commission found that the department provided finance to the schools and oversaw their operation, but left day-to-day control to the congregations and orders that operated them.
In 2006, giving evidence to the investigation committee, the secretary of the Department of Education admitted there had been "significant failings" by the department.
"As secretary general of the Department of Education and Science, I wish to state there were significant failings in relation to the department’s responsibility to the children in care in these institutions and that the department deeply regrets this," the statement said.
"Children were sent to industrial and reformatory schools by the state acting through the courts. While the institutions to whose care they were committed were privately owned and operated, the state had a clear responsibility to ensure that the care they received was appropriate to their needs.
"Responsibility for ensuring this lay with theDepartment of Education, whose role it was to approve, regulate, inspect and fund these institutions. It was clear that the department was not effective in ensuring a satisfactory level of care."
The industrial schools were owned by the religious orders who provided the buildings and farms, and they were responsible for improvements, alterations, extensions, renewals and repairs. The expenses for renovations and repairs were paid for out of the private resources of the congregations and by charitable donations.
According to the report, schools’ control over the department could be seen in the way decisions were made in the early 1950s about mixing offenders and non-offenders in industrial schools.
The question whether children who had been convicted of offending seriously or repeatedly should live in the same school as those in need of care should have been a key policy issue for the Department of Education, the commission found.
When addressing this question, before the commission, the Department of Education stated: "The policy regarding the category of child admitted to and detained within a particular school was a matter for the religious order concerned and the department had no role in the committal process."
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