NINE years ago, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made an unreserved apology to victims of institutional abuse. Following the 1999 apology, the Residential Institutions Redress Board was set up under laws passed in 2002 to compensate those who had suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse in childcare institutions subject to State regulation and inspection.
It was originally envisaged that 2,000 people would apply for compensation, but this number reached 14,500 last year.
The 2002 RIRB Act defined a child as a person under 18 years of age, even though this age limit did not reflect the fact that the legal and social conditions in the 1960s dictated that persons under the age of 21 were minors.
The public policy behind the lower age limit was to prevent any person under the age of 21 who had been arrested for a criminal offence and detained in an institute for young offenders, including St Patrick's Institution or Mountjoy Prison, from making a claim against the State.
The State was also able to mitigate its liability by capping the age limit; but yesterday's ruling, if unchallenged by the State, may open the floodgates to even more claims by alleged abuse survivors.
Speaking to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in 2004, Mr Ahern declared that the test of a true democracy was how it treated its weakest and most vulnerable members.
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Sotto Voce
(Source: II)