The medical records of children who spent years in a residential hospital have disappeared and are not available for use in making claims for compensation for abuse, it has emerged.
A Birmingham man, who grew up in St Joseph's Hospital in Coole, Co Westmeath, has been told by both church and State bodies that the records can no longer be found.
Mr David Lane, who is on the executive committee of Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA), says an official of the Department of Health and Children told a SOCA delegation that many institutions had destroyed records when they closed down.
The official was on holiday last week and could not be contacted for comment. A Department spokesman said, however, that so far as he knew the records of some institutions can no longer be found.
Mr Lane was sent to the hospital in Coole as a young boy with spina bifida. He was to spend almost 18 years there during which time he saw and experienced cruel acts which he spoke about on RTE's States of Fear series.
In recent years he has been receiving medical treatment in Britain and has been told by doctors and hospitals there that they need to see the medical records from his time at St Joseph's, which closed in 1981.
Mr Lane assumed substantial records would be available as he had "numerous" operations while at Coole.
Last November, after he made inquiries, he received a letter from Sister Agnes Monaghan, of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.
In it she said she was the person who brought the work of the order at the hospital "to a final completion".
"Medical records, X-rays etc were stored in filing cabinets in a room close to the operating theatre. All records were left in the care of the Meath Diocesan Trustees which was then chaired by the Rev Michael Smith on behalf of the Bishop of Meath. Father Michael Smith is presently Bishop of Meath."
When he contacted the Bishop he received a reply from the diocesan secretary, Father Declan Hurley, who said: "Over the years there have been a number of requests for medical records from people in a position similar to your own. I regret to have to tell you that no medical records from St Joseph's Hospital in Coole were ever stored here at Bishop's House in Mullingar. It is the recollection of Bishop Smith who, as Sister Agnes rightly pointed out, was chairman of the board of trustees, that all medical files were handed over to the Midland Health Board."
He added: "I regret very much that this appears as though you are being sent from `Billy to Jack' as it were. I also feel it my duty to tell you that those with whom I spoke today and who were closely involved at the time of the closure do not express much hope for the survival of the records."
The programme manager for hospital care in the Midland Health Board, Mr John Cregan, wrote to him in April saying that "yours is not the first inquiry received regarding such records. I regret to inform you that, despite extensive searches of the board's archives, inquiries with the North Eastern Health Board, French Daughters of Charity and board staff, it has not been possible to locate the medical records sought."
Mr Lane says the Midland Health Board has recently suggested to him that he contact the North Eastern Health Board. However, a spokesman for the NEHB told The Irish Times there was no reason why records from Coole, which is in the Midland Health Board area, should be in the custody of the NEHB.
Mr Lane has now asked a Dublin firm of solicitors to try to find the records.