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IT HAS BEEN established beyond doubt that the Irish State shares a significant part of the responsibility for Ireland’s sorry history of child abuse.
The majority of abuse may have been perpetrated by private individuals; but in various ways, the State created the conditions in which abusers were allowed to operate unchecked for lengthy periods.
However, while the State has accepted its responsibility in some cases, and paid compensation accordingly, it continues to legally obstruct other abuse survivors, causing further injury to them and violating their rights under international human rights law.
20 years ago last month, then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern issued a State apology to victims of child abuse.
Following this, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was established, culminating in the Ryan Report of 2009.
A redress scheme was established to compensate victims of abuse in residential institutions, and the State entered into an indemnity arrangement with the Catholic Church to cover the costs. To date, the bill to the State stands at €1.4 billion.
However, in spite of the State apology and the massive scale of the indemnity and compensation scheme, the State has spent the 20 intervening years seeking to evade responsibility for abuse in non-residential day schools, fighting victims in court and threatening to pursue them for enormous legal costs if they lose.
It does this in spite of the fact that its legal responsibility for this abuse has already been settled.
In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights held in the Louise O’Keeffe case that the State’s failure to implement effective child protection measures in primary schools made it partly responsible for the abuse suffered by her at the hands of her school principal, who had abused more than 20 girls on almost 400 occasions, before moving to another school, where he abused more children.
Since she suffered abuse in such a defective system and was denied compensation in the national courts, this violated Louise O’Keeffe’s right to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, and her right to an effective remedy.
Where a violation is found of the right to an effective remedy, it is an obligation of the State to put in place measures to ensure that similarly situated victims should receive compensation at the national level, without having to take a case to Strasbourg.
As such, the Irish Government proceeded to establish an ‘ex gratia’ scheme to provide out-of-court settlements.
This scheme was deliberately designed from the beginning to give the appearance of compliance with the O’Keeffe judgment while ensuring that compensation would be all but impossible for other abuse survivors to obtain.
In order to qualify for compensation, applicants have to prove that their abuse had occurred in the aftermath of a prior complaint against the abuser which had not been acted upon.
This was a feature of the facts of the O’Keeffe case; but it was not the factor on which the judgment turned, as made clear in several passages of the judgment.
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the UCC Child Law Clinic have repeatedly highlighted that the judgment turned on a systemic absence of proactive as well as reactive child protection mechanisms, and not on a specific failure to act on the complaint made against the abuser.
From the State’s perspective, the attraction of the prior complaint criterion was that it demanded applicants to do the impossible.
First, a large volume of international evidence shows that the majority of children who are sexually abused do not disclose this fact at the time; those that do make disclosures tend to wait until much later (often until adulthood).
As such, prior complaints are statistically unlikely to have been made in most abuse cases.
Second, even if a complaint was made, applicants are reliant on the evidence of such a complaint being accessible decades after the fact.
But the odds of records being available are not high.
A Department of Education circular directed complaints to school managers – almost invariably parish priests – and religious orders have a vested interest in obscuring the fact that complaints were made and not acted upon, lest they be exposed to legal liability alongside the State.
Even if records exist, the final insurmountable hurdle is the fact that the ex gratia scheme does not provide any mechanism for compelling religious orders to produce the records.
In cases where records have been sought in the course of processing applications for compensation, religious orders have simply refused to release them.
It emerged earlier this year, that every single one of the 45 people whose application to the ex gratia scheme has been considered to date, was refused due to the absence of evidence of a prior complaint.
In establishing and operating a compensation scheme that seems so obviously designed to deny compensation to people entitled to it, the Government is flouting both the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and the will of the Irish people, as expressed by their elected representatives.
On the latter point, the Dáil voted by a large majority last July to expand the terms of the ex gratia scheme; but as this was a non-binding motion, the Government chose to ignore it.
On the former point, a retired High Court judge is due to report shortly on whether the ex gratia scheme complies with the O’Keeffe judgment, while a fresh application was lodged in the European Court of Human Rights last year by John Allen, an abuse survivor from Cork City.
In May, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Education both stated in the Dáil that a scheme which rejects every single application is clearly not working, and should be reviewed.
However, several weeks later, no further information has been given on what this will mean, and requests for meetings from advocates have thus far led to nothing.
The ex gratia scheme proposes to make payments of €80,000 to successful applicants.
There are 360 known victims, all of whom were abused in an education system that has been found to have been inherently defective from a child protection standpoint.
Compensating all of them would cost €28.8 million – just 2% of the cost of the indemnity given to religious orders for institutional abuse.
In its efforts to avoid paying this money, the State has spent approximately €1.5 million on legal fees and re-traumatised some of its most vulnerable citizens.
It is far past time to stop lining the pockets of lawyers and to do the right thing for the right reasons.
If the Taoiseach and the Minister for Education meant what they said in the Dáil recently, then they should act on those words without further delay.
Dr Conor O’Mahony is a senior lecturer in child law and Director of the Child Law Clinic at University College Cork.
The Clinic provided legal research assistance to Louise O’Keeffe during her case before the European Court of Human Rights and has continuously advocated for compensation for abuse survivors since.
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Data Roaming was gone beyond a joke… Especially being a tourist who has to turn off their smart phone off when they go to another country constantly looking for free WiFi. If you have all you can eat data in Ireland it should be the same no matter where you go in Europe.
Allister
I agree that data roaming charges are too high, however just because you have a package in Ireland does not mean it should work in other countries.
When you are in a different country there is a high likelihood that you will be using a different organisation’s network infrastructure. If you don’t think you should pay any more money for this usage who is going to pay for the usage? Should the company give it to you for free?
Well no, Nick – but for the same price the locals pay. And if it’s the same provider you have at home then the rate shouldn’t change.
Martin
The locals that pay sign up to a contract and the operator will make money over time. A traveller may just be popping in and out of the network.
If you want to use local charges then buy a local SIM card. Expecting your own SIM to work at local rates is naive!
Nick Allen: you’re right there must be someone to pickup piggy backing costs of such roaming traveller – but explain me why the same operator will charge you a fortune? For example you bought all you can eat data with Three in Ireland. Why Three in UK charges on top of that or Drei in Germany? It’s the same company. I could understand separate charge say if you connected to T-mobile for example.
Tomasz
The issue here is not roaming charges, the issue is that the EU permit operators to ‘lock’ a SIM from other operators. If the SIM was open you could freely use local data packages. The operators are fighting tooth and nail to stop this happening. If / when this eventually happens and you travel to a new network you could be offered a pop up window with different operators competing to sell you some data usage packages. This level of competition is the big operators nightmare.
Regarding, using the same network while traveling. There are a few different reasons, some are related to the actual cost of providing the service and others are profit making. The basic idea of if you use a superior service you pay more applies. People on pre pay 20 euro top up packages will get hammered when travelling, you need a good post pay travelling package which most operators provide.
Nick.surely if we’re constantly reminded that we live in the EU and that we have no choice but to follow this law and that law and that were all one entity, well them why shouldn’t it apply to phone networks, we’re either a union or were not.
Aoife
That’s like saying because you subscribe to and pay for the (physical) Irish Times to be delivered to your door in Ireland that when you are in France on Holiday that LeMonde should be delivered with no extra cost.
Do you understand that these are different organisations with physically different networks managed by different people paying different wages and different tax rates ?
Nick I’d say it’s more like that if you were abroad you were being charged more for LeMonde because you were irish and that a French man would get it at local rates. As it is a copy of the Irish times does cost more when your abroad.
Aoife,
The billing on your phone bill is from the Irish company, the service you would be consuming is from the French company. There is a cost associated with matching up the service provision and the billing. This is performed by a 3rd party company called Syniverse. Syniverse charge both the Irish company and the French company for this service. This cost contributes to the roaming cost. Furthermore there is an increased risk associated with roaming. If you use your phone in France an incur a high charge it is your Irish phone company that is 100% liable for this bill. If you default on your bill payment (many people do) then the Irish company must pay your bill in full to the French company. This is a much higher risk than if you default on your local bill where it would only be lost earnings as opposed to the liability for the full retail price outlay.
This is absolutely nothing like being charged more for Lemoned because you are Irish.
I think the cost from this company called syniverse is ridiculous. Who are they and how do they charge such outlandish fees for simply connecting a phone. Surely at this stage in global connectivity it shouldn’t cost the earth to do it.you say many people default, what’s the percentage? I’ve never done it nor do I know anyone that has.
Aoife,
Unfortunately there is no ‘global network’, each network is individually owned and managed by different operators. This is why some networks offer a better quality of service than other networks. In order to let you and I the users benefit from the ability to move from network to network we need a technical connection between networks. This is part of what Syniverse do. This is a very specialised function which employs highly qualified and expensive people to manage. Also there is a significant capital infrastructure cost to maintain this network so there is a genuine justification for costs to be associated with roaming.
However, I have to agree with you regarding the actual costs. Given the high volumes of usage and the fact that Syniverse has a market capitalisation of close to USD 2.1 Billion I suspect that Syniverse’s charges are probably a bit on the high side. Syniverse has a virtually global monopoly on connecting mobile networks, I believe the connect in excess of 95% of the world’s networks. They also manage the inter operator billing. By this I mean at the end of each month they calculate how much each operator owes each operator for all their roaming charges and they distribute the net amount of funds. Again a complex and expensive service.
At the end of the day Syniverse keep a very low profile and in my experience it is rare that anyone has ever heard of them or understands their key role in mobile voice and data roaming. The cynic in me would suspect they like to keep under the radar as they are milking it.
However, as I posted earlier they key is that the SIM in each phone is locked to a specific network, this includes a SIM in a phone the most people would consider ‘unlocked’. If intra operator usage of SIMs was enabled then roaming costs would plummet as you could then for example contract to Orange while in France during a visit to France. The ability to do this is already there and it is actively suppressed, its a flick of a switch to un-suppress it. The EU had previously said that they were going to force this on the operators, commencing in 2017 but Vodafone and 3 both lobbied the EU and ‘agreed’ with the EU to change their minds. They claimed massive job losses through lost revenue if it went ahead. In my opinion this was just BS and was as a result of two massive organisations strong arming the EU.
With Vat the price’s are 6.15c per MB & 2.5cent per Text within the EU. Receiving texts are free but
Networks still rob you by charging 1.4cent per minute for receiving calls within the EU!!!
Alot of people would rather use messenger apps to call/text each other.
Random
I am not trying to defend the network charges but it is not all down to them. As I explained the network receives a bill from the foreign operator and from Syniverse when a call is made to your phone. Furthermore, the networks must pay a subscription fee to Syniverse to make roaming possible. Yes they probably make a few quid on it but they do incur a significant cost in the process so for the actual call they are not really robbing us. However, the operators do have the ability to change how the overall process works by opening up usage of their SIMs and if they did this then prices would tumble. This s why in the T&C’s of the contract it is the network that owns your SIM, you just borrow it. As they own the SIM then they don’t have to allow others to use their SIM.
If you are lucky enough to have an unlocked phone then you could simply get a prepay SIM from a local operator but this has the negative implication of giving u a different phone number and the hassle of looking after multiple SIM cards which can easily be lost or damaged. The way to low roaming costs is to get the EU to force operators to unlock their SIM cards and allow other operators to use them. The SIM is the key as it is the SIM that determines billing and phone number.
Aoife,
Sorry, I didn’t answer your question re default rates. The exact number of people that default on bill payment is very commercially sensitive information. A lot depends on market conditions etc but given we are going through times of austerity I expect it maybe high. I have anecdotally heard it is as much as 10% but I just don’t know. I suspect that if money is tight and someone doesn’t have enough cash for all their bills that the mobile ph may be thrown under the bus before gas or electricity
We are a fascist union
I can’t believe there’s no movement in Ireland to get the hell out and repudiate your odious debt
Just goes to show the profits they must have been making.
Well Meteor just put my bill up by €6 per month to make up for the loss…Will be changing provider ASAP
When they put your bill up, they break your original contract, so you can leave them anytime.
Operators could offer cheaper rate lol
They’ll find a way.
Next thing I’d like to see is them getting rid of VRT on cars within the EU. But of course that effects governments tax take and turkeys never vote for Christmas.
I think the government could appease many of the water protesters/ anti austerity protesters by cutting VRT and exorbitant road tax. The water charges were a step to far wit those FG conservative, austerity for everybody but the rich, twits
We’ll never put them away now. A good book on hols will be a thing of the past.
Bureaucrats in Brussels had to come up with some way of making the common person on the street feel the benefits of being in the EU so they can continue to have jobs.
After 20 years they decided this is the best they can come up with.
Still a half assed plan as there should be NO roaming charges within the EU
Did you read the article? It’s happening next year sure!
Emma
If there are no roaming charges who do you suggest pays for the cost of the data usage?
If I have a Tesco SIM and I travel to France and connect to the Orange network then where do you suggest Orange get paid from.
If I live on the east coast of the U.S and I travel to the west coast, there is no difference in price.
Michael, “planned” abolition of roaming fees next year, is a carrot and stick. We have been hearing that for years.
Emma
That’s garbage, the costs in The US are subject to interstate roaming.
As with Europe you can pay a higher fee and have these costs built in if you stay on a single operators network.
The costs for interstate roaming (If you are on that price plan) are nothing like what they are in Europe.
Same with Oz and same with Canada..
Massive, sparsely populated continents, cellularly connected that don’t try and swindle the customer by making up tales of how much it costs for them to send texts or receive phone calls.
It costs them f’all.
Mobile phone operators charge as much as they can get away with, and they have been badly abusing that privilege in Europe for a long time.
Emma
If you read my posts I have also stated that the charges are too high, we are in agreement on that. I am simply correcting your statement that there are no roaming charges in the US, there are roaming charges in the US and just like Europe the operators are making a fortune out of them.
First off Nick no one is saying that the phone companies can’t make a profit or that you have to recieve the best rate from the roaming country. Following your post on this subject you would think that the poor phone companies are making a loss. They are already making a profit on the local rates offered to local users. There just screwing people who roam. Three used to utilise another networks infrastructure as a back up for areas it didn’t have coverage and it didn’t cost you anymore.
And being in the EU is a bad thing!!!
Roaming charges are a feckin scam!!
Went on honeymoon last month to the states, was notified by text from Vodafone that I’ll be charged €2.99 per day while roaming with 200 mb included, I got very little 3G it kept dropping while using it and phone wouldn’t connect most times when I tried ringing my wife’s phone.
Got back to a bill of €130 on top of our normal bill for both phones!.
Vodafone said tough!, that I had to pay for the days roaming even when I couldn’t get the service because they had already paid AT&T !
Stephen
I agree, roaming outside of the EU is scary stuff from a cost perspective. It’s not the phone operator that you pay your bill to that is making the killing, its the local operator you are connected to that is.
The roaming charges are ridiculous in NI and of course, the EU. In the states not a single mobile phone company charges for roaming in the continental United States. You could have AT&T in Boston and no issues in California. No charges for “roaming”, texts, or (multimedia messages).
Stephen, they tried the same with me too, last autumn. They lied blatantly, trying to charge me €290 for 45MB of data. I had signed up for Red Roaming at €2.99/day and only used the service for my last day there when the local sim ran out. 2 months of wrangling phone calls followed before they eventually relented. Luckily, I cancelled my direct debit when I got the bill, otherwise I’m sure that, once the money was debited, I’d sing for it.
I recorded my dealings with Vodafone and kind of hoped that they’d pursue me legally, what I’d give to hear the 3 hrs or so of audio being played aloud in court! Unbelievable, what they tried to tell me; you weren’t signed up to Vodafone Passport, you opted out of the service the day before you used it, sorry, we confused KB with MB, you’ve exceeded the daily limit of 200MB – all lies.
Moral of the story – that particular phone company engages in fraud and is not to be trusted. I believe that the customer service agents get a piece of whatever monies they can fraudulently extract from gullible customers. My contract expires in August and I’ll be leaving them, albeit reluctantly, because for almost a decade they provided an excellent service.
The biggest disgrace is that Three will charge you 25c per Mb when roaming but have the cheek to charge you a Euro per Mb when you go over your limit here in Ireland, pure Ripoff
If your on prepay on any network and give your account a good top up, try figuring out what you where charged for each call when you get back and all your credit it gone.
Maybe someone on here can advise how to track it, not Data, I wouldn’t use that abroad in a fit, just the voice and text charges. It would be a bitch trying to work it out going over your phone records.
Richard,
Do you not have online access to your pre pay call usage? My experience on prepay is that you can view the details if you register and log onto the operators web site
About time – I remember being in Spain in 2009 and it was €5/MB. Foolishly I checked my email one day and one cost me €20 – it would turn anyone off using their phone
I’m with Meteor and last weekend in London I got a text saying: 23c per min to call Ireland & EU from the UK, 6c to receive. TXTs 7c. MMS 30c. Data 25c per MB. More info freecall 1905. Emergency Services call 112. What s joke!
Denise
Why is that a joke? 23c to be able to make a call in a different country from the devise in your pocket. How much is a call from a phone box? What is the underlying cost to making this call. How much do you commit to paying meteor each month? Probably naff all! They are not a charity. If you want cheaper usage when travelling then get a different package from your operator.
From Three in Europe: It’s 23.37c p/m to make EU calls; 6.15c p/m to receive; 7.38c to send SMS & 24.60c/MB to use web/ MMS. And From Three in the UK: It’s 6.15c p/m to make calls; 1.4c p/m to receive; 2.46c to send SMS; 6.15c/MB for data & 24.6c /MMS. So we will see how this changes today on my travels.
Don’t just believe this PR text of the EU, I urge you to check with your provider what the specifics are for your plans because there are providers out there which do not stick to these rules and claim they are allowed to charge you more than the set caps.
Tesco on their Pay As You Go plans have raised their out of bundle prices (voice by 30%, SMS by 100% to way over the EU Roaming Cap) and claim they are allowed to charge you this because they don’t charge you the mentioned roaming adder.
Tesco on their Pay As You Go Plans does not allow you to use their inclusive minutes and will charge you the high out of bundle charges.
Three is of the opinion that some of their plans inclusive minutes doe not count as they are promotional and hence will charge you their out of bundle charges either with adder (if under the roaming cap) or the full price using the same argument as Tesco.
Check before you go so that you don’t end up paying more than you expect.
Nick Allen, can you tell me what network you where on that let you log in and look up your itemised prepay usage. As far as I can see, no network in ireland has this available. You said it was in your experience?, so it seems it’s something you have been able to do ?.
Are these the absolute max prices or the maximum additional charge on top of a local call. The reason I ask is that at 5c per min, it would be significantly cheaper for me to ring home from Spain than to ring my next door neighbour from my house.
rubblsh i was in the north and got yhis txt Call Ireland from within Europe for EUR0.30 per minute and EUR0.014 per minute to receive calls from Ireland. Send a text for EUR0.14. See tescomobile.ie for all roaming rates or Freecall 1743
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