"I find it so hard to believe that after 18 years of hospitalisation, no record of my time spent at the hospital can be recovered," says Mr David Lane.
But if the records are missing, the memories remain. They include memories of nuns who were kind and motherly, but who did nothing to stop the cruel behaviour of some of their colleagues.
Being tied to the bed for hours for misbehaving was the least of what could happen. He remembers a nurse who, if a boy soiled his underpants, would rub them in his face. This was done to him, too.
One day a doctor who was examining him asked him to wiggle his toes. He was unable to do so, he presumes because of his spina bifida. The doctor told him not to worry about it, finished the examination and left.
As soon as he had gone, the nun who had been in attendance came back with what he calls a "twig" and beat his left foot until it bled.
Being disabled they were not able to run from beatings. "I can still picture children on all fours crawling under beds trying to get away from the nun in question."
Some people, he said, cannot have children because of how they were mistreated in residential hospitals.
"People who spent many years in hospitals like myself want our records because we were damaged in hospitals throughout Ireland."
He intends to pursue - both personally and through Survivors of Child Abuse, of which he is an active member - the issue of the missing records "not just for me but for all the other disabled people out there trying to figure out what happened".
In a question addressed to the Government, he asks: "How are you going to ensure that they are not let walk away from it?"
He and others like him were "forgotten children" in the 1950s and 1960s, he says. He is determined that they will be forgotten no more.