Up to 100 marchers attended a demonstration by survivors of abuse in industrial schools in Dublin today.
The marchers congregated outside St Mary's Pro-cathedral in the city centre before marching to the Dáil. They tied children's shoes to the railings outside both the Dail land the Pro-cathedral to represent the 147 children who died in St Joseph's industrial school, Letterfrack, Co Galway.
The demonstration was organised by abuse survivors group, Fire and Ice, which aims to empower survivors of industrial schools through achieving compensation and justice for all those who experienced abuse.
The group has called for the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002 to be deemed unconstitutional, adversarial and unjust. And they have called for all survivors to have a say in how trust funds or compensation funds are dispersed. They have also called for pensions to be provided to all survivors and emergency funding for extreme cases.
There should also be greater penalties for convicted paedophiles, the group said.
Demonstrators travelled from many parts of the country as well as from the UK.
Some spoke of the treatment they experienced when they attended the Redress Board. They complained of the adversarial nature of the hearings and the confidentiality agreement they had to accept in order to get compensation from the board.
Others talked about their reactions to the Pope Benedict's pastoral letter on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland, issued at the weekend.
Organiser Barry Clifford, who spent 10 years in an industrial school, said the Act on which the board was founded was unconstitutional. He also called for a permanent register of sex offenders in Ireland.
