More answers needed on institutional abuse cases

From Christine Buckley

I applaud Ken Foxe's article (News 14 September). Ten lawyers made over €1m from abuse cases for obtaining the information from the Residential Institutions Redress Board and the Department of Education (Redress Unit) which I was unable to prise from them despite repeated requests.

We would very much appreciate if Foxe would continue in investigative mode on the issue of the dispersal of monies in relation to institutional abuse cases and consider pursuing the following queries to which I have yet to receive a direct response:

1. How much has been earned in payments by Redress Panel members to date and how many of them are there?

2. How much of the total pot from the Redress Board has been paid in fees to other professionals such as medical, psychiatric and educational consultants and how much of these fees have been requested from victims themselves?

3. The most important question that requires an answer is -out of the total pot of €97m, how much has gone directly to victims?

4. Why is there such disparity now in payments to victims who relate the same abuses as have been related in the early years of the Board? Not alone has this happened to victims but to siblings who spent the same amount of time in the same institutions who have suffered very similar abuses.

Is the answer to this question that the pot is running dry because of the colossal fees paid to individuals other than the victims. Or have the panel members become immune to the pain and trauma of victims experiences?

5. Who and what controls are there on fees to professionals from the pot of monies to be dispersed?

Christine Buckley

Aislinn Centre,

Jervis House,

Jervis Street,

Dublin 2

Media should be free
to report on suicides

From Maurice Fitzgerald

The press or any area of the media should not be censored or dissuaded in any way from reporting on social problems of any kind, which invariably contain stories of suicide. There is a large posse of people in this country that want every socially undesirable or troubling problem to be brushed under the carpet, and in so doing shut up the media by suggesting it will lead to spurious copycat suicides.

The media should not give in to such blackmail and report the facts in a understanding but objective fashion, irrespective of those who are adverse to the taboo in their minds. Ireland and in particular the Republic has a huge suicide problem sweeping the country, which is very newsworthy and relevant to modern day media reporting.

Suicide is spreading like wildfire and is arguably the most socially reportable news story there is, detailing a massive and unprecedented sociological breakdown in a degenerative culture of substance abuse and work related issues. Life on this island is sterile, confused, and corrupt, producing a suicidal mind in a large portion of the population.

Just because the media report such issues will not change the fact that many people are completely resolved to kill themselves notwithstanding any reports of suicide. The 'anti-suicidal media reporting lobby' should note that many negative events surround peoples' lives, given the appalling social conditions in this country irrespective of whether a newspaper is printed or a TV story is broadcast. In any case, journalists have a duty to report current events whatever they many be or who ever they might offend. Under no circumstances should the Irish media engage in a 'containment policy' on any issue which would amount to a state-controlled communist style apparatus for the purposes of dumbing down.

Maurice Fitzgerald,

Shanbally,

Ringaskiddy,

Co Cork

Grealish saga shows
contempt of politicians

From Paul Doran

The ongoing saga of Noel Grealish and the will-he won't-he move to Fianna Fáil shows the sheer contempt these political parties have the way they can treat the people who elect them. Maybe the good people of Galway will show Grealish what they think of him the next time around.

Paul Doran,

Monastery Walk,

Clondalkin,

Dublin 22

Does department not care about students?

From Sarah Donnelly &?Aisling Ryan

The Department of Education & Science has left the students of this school without two teachers for the coming year. The department told the principal that the reason is that the school has too many teachers. The problem is that the two teach Music, Metalwork, Engineering, Technical Drawing and Technical Graphics and that no other teacher in the school is able to teach these subjects.

The students are very upset about this. We have no one to teach us our important subjects. Our two teachers, Ms Hickey and Mr Reidy, are two excellent teachers and we want them reappointed. We know that after a big fight by the school and after exposure in the media that the department has agreed to pay so that our 3rd and 6th year students will be taught. This only happened last Tuesday.

Why does the Department of Education & Science not care about all the children of this school? What about our 1st, 2nd and 5th years – who will teach them? Why has the department treated some of our students differently?

Sarah Donnelly and Aisling Ryan,

Student Council ,

St Joseph's Secondary School,

Spanish Point, Co Clare