Stormont’s Executive Office will “shortly” announce how much those behind former institutions where abuse took place have contributed towards a redress fund for victims and survivors.
The extent of sexual, physical and emotion abuse at former homes run by the state, church and charities from 1922 to 1995 was revealed by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry.
Support and compensation for victims and survivors were among the recommendations of the inquiry in 2017.
At the Executive Office scrutiny committee last week, Jon McCourt, chairman of Survivors North West, expressed his frustration at the length of time it had taken for the institutions to contribute.
Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly indicated to the Assembly on Monday that an announcement would be made on that “very very shortly”.
“This is an incredibly important issue, not just because there ought to be a financial contribution by the institutions because there was fault by those institutions,” she told MLAs during questions for the Executive Office.
“But I think it is also incredibly important in terms of the acknowledgement of their role, and I know that that has been raised by the victims and survivors of historical institutional abuse, that that is an important element.
“We have appointed a person in terms of that liaison.
“That person has been in place for the last number of years, and we have extended that by further two years to enable him to continue that engagement with the institutions.
“We have made progress, and we hope to be in a position to announce very shortly some of the early financial contributions by some of the institutions.
“But that work will continue.
“We are determined that institutions should play their part and make that financial contribution and that is what this work is committed to, and we will update the House in due course in terms of progress.”
Pressed by Alliance MLA Connie Egan asked Ms Little-Pengelly if she would agreed that the time this has taken has “compounded the trauma” for victims and survivors.
Ms Little-Pengelly responded: “Absolutely.
“This has been a very challenging journey for many many of those campaigners who sought for this inquiry to happen, for the truth to be told and for redress.
“I pay tribute absolutely to those campaigners.
“I am glad that the work of the redress board is now drawing to a close in terms of the processing of those applications with only a small number of those applications left to be processed.
“We do anticipate that some may come forward now within the last year of the operation of that (redress) board, so the work is not yet complete, but we are certainly getting to the end of that work.”
