One victim's experience: One man who has been waiting for five years to see Department officials being questioned by the Laffoy commission now fears it may never happen, writes Liam Reid
The proposal to "sample" cases of child abuse allegations is the most contentious issue for victims' representatives for two reasons. One is that individual complainants may never have their stories heard.
The second is that sampling hampers the investigation into the handling of abuse cases by the State itself, and by staff who are still in the Department of Education and other State agencies.
The handling of one case in particular has been highlighted, in which senior officials in the Department of Education, as late as 1984, questioned the propriety of "raking up the past" by taking action against the alleged abuser Donal Dunne.
Ten years later, Dunne sexually assaulted the son of friends.
The person who made the initial complaints about Dunne to the Department has been waiting five years for the promised Laffoy investigation.
Now he fears those who failed to act on his complaint will never be called before an inquiry under what he describes as "a lottery system".
The Dunne case, because of the serious questions surrounding the handling by the Department, was referred to Laffoy for investigation by then minister Micheál Martin. He heavily criticised the Department's response as wholly inadequate, and placed records on its handling in the Dáil library.
This complainant was abused by Dunne at Walsh Island national school in Co Offaly in the late 1960s. Dunne was moved from the school after the abuse, but continued his teaching career in secondary schools.
In the early 1980s, when the victim became aware Dunne was teaching at a girls' school in Tullamore, he contacted the Department of Education and a number of politicians. He also made a written complaint about the fact that Dunne continued to teach.
In 1982, he informed one member of the Department of Education's inspectorate about Dunne. According to a Dáil response in 1999, the official's recollection of events was that the complainant was seeking advice. He advised him to make a written complaint to the Department.
The victim, however, has contradicted this version of events. He had already made a written complaint and was looking for the official to take action against Dunne. He claims the official told him that it was a moral issue and therefore one for the church, which ran the school.
According to the records placed in the Dáil library in spring 1999, the Department also received the complaint but it was never responded to, despite the fact it came across the desk of seven officials.
An official in the teachers' section was asked to inquire into the allegation, and what the Department might do.
His response was that the employment of Dunne was a matter for the school management - the Department's role was to ensure he was properly qualified and "within quota".
"It would not be for the Department to give character references to a school regarding a teacher it proposes to employ. If Mr Dunne has served as a secondary teacher - in girls' schools - for the last 13 years without coming under any notice, is it correct to rake up the past now?" said an internal memo. Another memo from a different senior official suggested that, because Dunne was in a girls' school, he did not pose a risk as the allegations related to the abuse of boys. It suggested that - because the allegations were so serious - the Department would be within its rights to take action.
This memo also notes the time delay between the complainant's abuse and his contacting the Department.
Yet another civil servant who saw the complaint did not want to take action. In a memo to a colleague, he asks: "Do you think any action should be taken? I don't."
In January 1984, a final memo on the matter, from the seventh civil servant to have dealt with the matter, synopsises the case in the view of the Department.
The points included the fact that the complaint was more than 10 years old, Dunne was due to retire the following year, management in his current school were aware of complaints against him, and that the last inspector's report on him was satisfactory.
During this whole process, the complainant was never contacted. Indeed, he never even received an acknowledgement to his complaint.