The Investigation Committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is to seek changes in legislation to allow it address the role of the courts in placing children in the residential institutions it is inquiring into.
At a public hearing in Dublin yesterday the chairman of the Committee, Mr Justice Seán Ryan, said that while, previously, it had been felt such an approach might be outside the commission's terms of reference "it seems to us it would be unsatisfactory to ignore this part of the history that we have to explore."
The committee had also decided "not to name individual perpetrators of abuse unless they were convicted in the courts" and "to call witnesses to give evidence of abuse suffered by them to the extent necessary for the inquiry." Proposals on those lines had been outlined by Mr Justice Ryan at a press conference in Dublin on May 7th.
There had been consultation with relevant parties, he said, and, while the Committee did not expect everyone to agree with all its decisions, they could not avoid "the responsibility of deciding difficult questions."
It was time for the investigation to get underway. There had been enough - "even too many" - reviews and reports and discussions on ways and means. Meanwhile all participants were getting older and people were impatient to see the inquiry progress.
Legislative changes were being worked on and would not delay the committee's work, he said. But it would not be possible to produce an interim report prior to the law being changed.
He said the committee planned to investigate each residential institution separately and would "first ascertain what the attitude of the relevant congregation is to the complaints that have been made." They would then be in a position to decide how many of the complainants they would need to call "in order to fill out the picture," he said.
Where there were high levels of co-operation by institutions it would be "obviously unnecessary to concentrate on hearing a large number of witnesses." The attitudes of the congregations and institutions to complaints made were "very important".
It was hoped they would "feel able to co-operate as fully as possible, and it should be acknowledged that some congregations had taken a position of spectacular Christian concern for the victims and for finding out the truth," he said.
"No devout religious can feel comfortable putting victims of abuse through further trauma and distress if that can be avoided,"
Those witnesses not called by the Investigation Committee could go before the Commission's Confidential Committee, as a large number of victims have already chosen to do, he said.