A state-funded counselling and therapeutic service for people who have been abused in orphanages and other institutions has not been set up despite a 1996 undertaking from the then Taoiseach. This week a Channel 4 helpline got hundreds of calls after it screened a documentary about the experiences of women in Ireland's Magdalene laundries.
The commitment was given to a former resident of the Golden bridge orphanage in a letter from the private secretary of the then Taoiseach, Mr Bruton. "It is intended that a full counselling and therapeutic service will be provided by the health boards in response to the needs of those who have been abused in the past," the letter said.
But last March, a senior civil servant at the Department of Health, Ms Frances Spillane, told a conference that legal complications had caused delays. These difficulties, which she refused to specify, had been referred to the Attorney General some months previously and were expected to be clarified later that month.
Since then, nothing has been heard of the proposed service. The Department of Health and Children was yesterday unable to clarify the situation as Ms Spillane is in China with Minister of State, Mr Frank Fahey.
Ms Christine Buckley, whose experiences in Goldenbridge were featured in the Louis Lentin documentary Dear Daughter, said yesterday she was angry that the service had not been established.
The Conference of Religious in Ireland has set up a helpline which is available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ms Buckley said this was not enough and that a fulltime helpline, independent of religious orders, was needed.
Ms Dori Mitchell, who manages the CORI helpline, said she believed the hours were adequate. In the past year, up to 400 people have made about 1,000 calls. CORI has agreed to pay for direct counselling for about 100 people.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Catholic Press and Information Office in Dublin has said the producers of last Monday's Channel 4 programme on the laundries, Wit- ness: Sex in a Cold Climate, failed to avail of the agreed co-operation of the Church in Ireland.
He said that after the programme makers had circulated a letter to Irish newspapers, he contacted them in Bristol. Ms Miriam White of Testimony Films indicated she was researching a documentary exploring "the history of courtship and attitudes to sex in Ireland between the 1920s and the 1960s" and would like to talk to people "who had personal experience of this and came into conflict with those in authority while they were young".
They especially wanted to hear from women who had illegitimate babies who were adopted, from young women who were sent to Magdalene homes and from men on their courtship experiences and attitudes to sex at the time.
The spokesman was concerned about the letter's tone, which he felt was "leading" people, and he told Ms White that he hoped the programme would reflect the society and the times in which the homes existed, and that it would be balanced. He suggested she should talk to CORI on the matter.
Ms White did so but then stopped. He emphasised he was not criticising any of the people who appeared on the programme, but he believed it would have been helpful to contextualise what was going on in Ireland at the time.