The Minister for Education has told groups representing people abused as children in residential institutions there is no upper limit to what they may be awarded in compensation by the State's Redress Board.
Mr Dempsey met the groups on January 13th and again last Tuesday. He assured them there would be no capping of awards by the State.
The amount in each case was a matter for the Redress Board, he said, and it was within its remit to award "as much as a million (in any particular case) if it wanted", Mr Mick Waters, of the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) UK group, recollected him saying.
Mr Waters was critical of comments by Ms Christine Buckley yesterday, that victims abused in residential institutions had been "totally and utterly sold down the tubes". She was speaking in the context of a settlement last Tuesday by the Dublin archdiocese with Mr Mervyn Rundle, under which he received what sources now say was slightly in excess of €300,000.
Ms Buckley contrasted that amount with what was available to people abused over many years in residential institutions under the State scheme. "You would have to be paralysed, literally paraplegic to get €300,000" from that scheme, she said.
Mr Waters considered her remarks "disgraceful", particularly as she had attended the same meetings at which Mr Dempsey assured groups there would be no capping of awards. Her threat about advising a boycott of the scheme was "a form of bullying".
Nor had she the "right to speak on behalf of the 3,000 survivors", he said. He recalled that she and others at the meetings had pronounced themselves "happy" with what they had been told about the scheme. Most of the survivors were elderly.