The Minister for Education and Science, Mr Dempsey, has described the State's past inaction on the treatment of children in residential institutions as "one of the most shameful failures in Irish history".
Speaking in London yesterday, he said that as a society and State "we failed to hear what was being said by numerous survivors who tried over the years to speak of their experiences while in institutional care".
Mr Dempsey was speaking at an information day for Irish people living in Britain who had been in residential institutions in the Republic as children. An estimated 40 per cent of those who were in such institutions as children now live in Britain.
The event took place at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine and followed extensive advertising in Irish publications in Britain.
Mr Dempsey said that last December it was indicated to him that former residents of the institutions now living in Britain "felt left out of the measures which have been put in place by the Irish State to assist survivors, and did not feel that the apology given on May 11th, 1999, by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern TD, was given to them as well as survivors resident in Ireland".
He had promised then to travel to Britain and to personally deliver that apology on behalf of the State as well as host an information day.
He repeated the Taoiseach's "sincere and long-overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue".
It was only as a result of the bravery of individual survivors who were determined that both their own and their stories be told and that justice be sought that the State was now attempting to redress the hurt that was caused.
He said he fully recognised there was nothing he could say or do which would take away the hurt and pain they had suffered and continued to suffer.
Mr Dempsey outlined how the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was set up and the legal difficulties it had since faced.
If it was to report within the next six or seven years, as planned, the template for the commission had to be re-examined, he said.
Originally, it had been intended that a compensation scheme would follow the commission's work, but it was soon clear that it would be unfair to survivors to delay setting up such a scheme.
A redress board to assess and make financial redress to survivors was established last December, he said. The Government was also providing professional counselling services.
Two outreach officers had been appointed in London, with one each also in Coventry, Sheffield, and Manchester to provide information on these matters.
They were attached to Irish centres, while a development worker for Britain had been appointed in his Department "to allow the outreach service grow in a structured way".
"For many of you the emigrant ship was the only way which you knew to try and escape from the memories of childhood," he said. And "despite the great success enjoyed by so many Irish people who have emigrated to Britain, there are also those for whom life here has been a struggle and those for whom loneliness and social isolation shape their existence.
Their childhood in Ireland had responsible to a large degree for their inability to make a life for themselves, and Irish society must do everything it could to make their lives a little better.
While there was an acknowledgment that there was nothing society could do today which would fully compensate for the years of suffering experienced, he hoped the measures taken by the State would provide the basis for some alleviation of the burden.
