Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2022-11-10
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Holly Cairns (SD), Cork South-West

The RTÉ documentary on the sexual abuse at Blackrock College highlights the murky history of abuse and cover-up in our education system. The redress scheme for survivors of sexual abuse in schools only came about through the bravery of Louise O'Keeffe who went to the European Court of Human Rights. The scheme, however, is intentionally restrictive and even with last year's changes it is designed to exclude many, as it is only open to those who had begun legal proceedings prior to July 2021. The Government is fully aware that many cases were dropped or even not initiated following the Supreme Court ruling against Louise O'Keeffe in 2009. This cruel restriction needs to be removed to enable all survivors of abuse to claim redress. Also, there is a glaring need to establish a commission of investigation into sexual and other forms of abuse in our schools.

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-11-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:16+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-11-10