A WOMAN who was sexually and physically abused as a child in a State-funded residential institution has brought a legal challenge to the refusal of the Residential Institutions Redress Board to allow her to claim compensation.
The board refused to allow the claim to proceed on the grounds that it was brought outside the time limits for such claims.
However the woman said that the delay arose because she was helping her mother, who, she found out in 2004, had also been abused as a child in another institution, with her own redress application.
In the High Court in Dublin yesterday, Mr Justice Michael Peart heard the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was abused at an institution in Dublin more than 40 years ago. The abuse began when she was just three or four years old.
Leave to bring the challenge was granted on an ex parte (one side only) basis by Mr Justice Peart who has returned the matter to March.
Dervla Browne SC, for the woman, said her client and her mother were very close and the effort of dealing with her mother’s abuse, about which her daughter first learned in 2004, was too much.
This was an exceptional case and the board’s decision was wrong, Ms Browne argued.
The woman had been encouraged her to bring her own claim and she applied to the board for an extension of time to do so but the board informed her last September that her late application had been refused.