Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill 2024: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-06-19
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Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin

With regard to how much is left in the fund, I have gone back over freedom of information, FOI, requests I submitted in 2017 on the specific fund in Caranua and at that stage, there was €33 million. Therefore, it would be helpful to know what happened between 2017 - I think it was around April 2017 - and now. It was really difficult at the time for survivors to engage with Caranua. They were treated terribly at the time. Obviously, there was the €15,000 cap. I think it was in 2015 that internal auditors decided this would be the cap, and Caranua at the time was stating that survivors had decided that €15,000 would be the cap. There were discussions about that at the time, when representatives from Caranua appeared before the education committee. There was €33 million in April 2017. It would be helpful to know what now remains in that account since then. I know it was a struggle to make up that expenditure until then because people were finding it difficult to access money from Caranua. In the grand scheme of things, €33 million is not a lot when we consider the devastation in people's lives and what they need, but Caranua's main principles in setting up were to meet the ongoing needs. The sum €15,000 will never meet the ongoing needs of people who have endured what people endured to be able to apply for the funding in the first place. I just wanted to come back in on that. When Senator Boyhan mentioned what was in the fund, I remembered that I had put in an FOI request on that a few years ago. It would be helpful to know that information.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-06-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-06-19