The Department of Education has admitted to "significant failings" in ensuring children in residential institutions were properly cared for in the past. It said it "deeply regrets this".
In evidence to the investigation committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday, the department's secretary general Brigid McManus said that while the relevant institutions "were privately owned and operated" the State had "a clear responsibility to ensure the care the children received was appropriate to their needs".
Responsibility for this lay with the department "whose role it was to approve, regulate, inspect and fund these institutions".
She continued "it is clear the department was not effective in ensuring a satisfactory level of care".
The very need to establish the commission testified to that, she said, but she also wished to acknowledge efforts by individual officials to improve the quality of care offered to children.
She described the department's inspection system as "inadequate in a number of respects".
It did not ensure all schools were inspected annually, as legally required. The number of inspections varied from school to school and from year to year. The focus prior to 1976 was on material and physical aspects of care.
The handling of complaints about the treatment of children in the institutions had been "unsatisfactory" with many treated as "insignificant". All were referred to the resident manager of the institution whose response determined the outcome.
There was also evidence the department treated complaints about physical punishment "with scepticism", she said.
Where funding was concerned for most of the period under investigation the department had accepted that a higher level was justified than that approved by the Department of Finance, she said. The level of financial provision "had to be a factor in the quality of care provided", she said.
