Plans Announced For Next Stage Of Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry

The Chairman of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, Sir Anthony Hart, has today announced that a team of Inquiry lawyers, support staff and Acknowledgement Forum Panel members will pay a second visit to Australia next month.

The visit will form part of the preparations for the Inquiry’s second module of hearings, which will examine the operation of a child migrant scheme involving the transfer of children from institutions in Northern Ireland to institutions in Australia.

The Chairman said that the module – Module 2 – will commence hearings at the beginning of September.

The Inquiry hopes to commence hearings for Module 3 later in the same month. That module will focus on the former De La Salle Boys’ Home, Rubane House, in Kircubbin, Co. Down.

The Chairman said: "As you will be aware, today is the 35th day of public hearings devoted to St Joseph’s Home, Termonbacca and Nazareth House Children’s Home, both in Derry/Londonderry, and we expect that the public hearings in relation to these institutions should be completed by the end of this month, or at the latest by early June.

"As anyone who has been following the public hearings since they started in January this year will realise, the Inquiry has so far heard from 70 witnesses, and the statements from many of those witnesses have been given to the Inquiry as the public hearings have been taking place. In addition, so far over 18,000 documents have been placed before the Inquiry in this module alone. However, the Inquiry staff had to consider a great many more documents than that to decide which were relevant.

"I mention these matters to demonstrate that, as the public hearings take place, there is a great deal of preparatory work that continues to be done in order to take statements from witnesses and gather documents. All of this material has to be considered, collated and processed by the Inquiry before the public session in which a witness gives evidence.

"This involves an enormous amount of work behind the scenes by the Inquiry staff to prepare the necessary material for each day of public hearings in the current module. At the same time they are also pursuing investigations into other institutions, and preparing the necessary material for the Inquiry panel to consider in future modules. This work will continue over the summer months after the present module finishes.

"After the present module, the Inquiry will examine the operation of the child migrant scheme in the context of children from Northern Ireland institutions who were sent to Australia. Before that module can start, we have to complete our preparatory work for it, and a major part of that involves a second team from the Inquiry going from Northern Ireland to Australia to speak to those applicants who were not seen during last year's trip.

"Some of them will only speak to the Acknowledgment Forum, but a significant number have to be seen by the Inquiry team. Altogether this will tie up a significant number of Inquiry staff for all of June. That module will then start on Monday 1 September and, whilst the detailed timetable will not be finalised until nearer that time, we are setting aside three weeks for public sessions for that module.

"It will then be followed by the third module which will consider the experiences of children who were placed in the home run by the De La Salle Order at Rubane near Kircubbin, Co. Down. We anticipate that the public hearings relating to that module will start on Monday 29 September."

(CVS/CD)