The secretary general at the Department of Education and Science, Mr John Dennehy, has said there was no significant evidence of sexual abuse at the State's residential institutions in files at the Department.
Giving evidence to the investigation committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Dublin yesterday, he corroborated the view of the former minister at the Department, Mr Micheál Martin, who told the committee on Wednesday that relevant files dealt mainly with physical abuse and neglect.
The minister said details of sexual abuse at the institutions emerged mainly through the media and survivors.
However, earlier yesterday another former minister for education, Dr Michael Woods, who in January 2000 succeeded Mr Martin in the post, told the committee files there reported "abuse particularly physical, some instances of sexual (abuse) and some of both."
Mr Dennehy was asked by the committee chairman, Judge Seán Ryan, if files on sex abuse at the institutions existed in the Department. Clearing up the confusion, Mr Dennehy said that historian Dr Gerry Cronin had prepared two reports on the files in 1999.
In September of that year he reported that the abuse recorded was "physical, psychological, and neglect, as well as two isolated allegations of sex abuse in an institution." In a December 1999 report he concluded that, where evidence of sexual abuse was concerned, "apart from a few isolated references" in files, there was "very little material" on it.
Dr Woods told the committee he was aware of files which had reported "starving" children, "dressed in rags" and "begging", usually in the context of extra funding being sought. The institutions were generally told "make do with what you had," he said. He recalled that similar institutions in England considered their funding inadequate even though they received 10 times the capitation allowance in Ireland.
He said that in 1965 a priest based in an institution made "veiled allegations" about abuse there. The priest was dismissed as a crank by the institution, and that was accepted by the Department, he said. When he took over at the Department preparations were well under way for the setting up of the commission.
People had become "more acutely aware of the issues and problems faced by victims, especially the long-term effects, also on their families and their whole life." It made "more urgent" the setting up of some form of redress scheme. He was anxious to expedite this as soon as possible as victims were dying, many were old and "quite distressed".
He felt there was "a particular moral responsibility on the part of the State" as many survivors were put in the institutions for "flimsy reasons" and the State had sub-contracted out the institutions (to congregations).
Though it was seen as desirable that the congregations be involved in a redress scheme, "to bring closure to the whole issue", he was "very firm" the State would go ahead anyhow.
Mr Tom Boland, head of legal affairs at the Department and director of strategic studies there from 1998 to 2002, traced emerging Government awareness and action on the issue from 1997/98 to 2002. He praised the role of the survivors and their support groups in educating the Irish public and the Irish political and administrative system about what had been going on in the institutions. He said their influence "could not be exaggerated."