The Christian Brothers’ industrial school in Artane, Dublin, where young boys were subjected to unimaginable abuse.

In 1998, I was on holiday to Ireland from France, where I then lived, with my then 3 and 4 year old sons and their Dad.  After a meal in a restaurant in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, myself and my youngest son came down with a severe bout of food poisoning.  It turned out that a dodgy batch of eggs had caused an outbreak of Salmonella, and the place was shut down immediately by the authorities. 

Lawsuits swiftly followed. The restaurant accepted full culpability, and their insurers paid out to all of the victims without dragging their heels. My son was awarded €4,000, money he can only access on turning 18. He’s always called it his “car money”. 

I got €9,000, which is just about the amount of money the religious orders have contributed in compensation to each one of the victims of their communities.  

As a result of the Salmonella, I lost a few pounds and had to “endure” a week or so off work. The only long term effect is a lingering distrust of hollandaise sauce.  

14,584 former residents of Catholic children’s homes and institutions in Ireland have had to live with the psychological scarring of their abusers’ actions all of their lives.  More couldn’t, and killed themselves or died as a result of their addictions.  Others ended up in and out of jail.  The irony that it was many of the victims, and not their abusers, who ended up with criminal records, was not lost on Michael, an extraordinary man who spoke eloquently and movingly of his suffering on Newstalk Radio yesterday morning.  The shocking truths revealed in the Ryan report in recent days are almost unbearable to read or hear.  That the state and church colluded over decades in the abuse of innocent, vulnerable children makes me feel like the ordinary German must have felt after Auschwitz was liberated in 1945. 

The murky deal that the government signed on behalf of the taxpayer with the religious orders was negotiated in 2002, years before the true extent of the abuse was revealed.  It should be null and void, and the religious orders involved should pay out generously and without question to the survivors.

And that’s just for starters.  Next, they need to name the perpetrators and let those who are still living stand trial and go to jail. Then they could take up Alice Leahy’s suggestion.  As founder of Trust, an organisation dedicated to the homeless, Alice has no doubt come across plenty of the victims in her day. Her idea is that the religious congregations build and fund (but let others run, for obvious reasons) a comfortable, accessible, friendly hostel where men and women who have lived lives of pain and suffering thanks to their childhood treatment can feel welcomed, cared for and safe.

The religious orders doing the right thing at this late stage of the game won’t take away the pain of any of the survivors.  But it would be the first evidence of Christian behaviour on their part since this whole episode came to light.