Mary Laffoy

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The Honourable Ms. Justice Mary Laffoy is a High Court judge in the Republic of Ireland. She presided over the Laffoy Commission, an inquiry into child abuse, before causing controversy by resigning as its chair.

In her letter of resignation from that Commission, Ms. Justice Laffoy outlined her belief that the actions of the Government, the Department of Education as well as the behaviour of some religious orders had frustrated her efforts and had slowed the commission's work.

[edit] Main points contained in the resignation letter of Justice Laffoy

That the Government's decision to engage in a second phase of a review had effectively put the substantive work of the Commission's Investigation Committee on hold.

That the only clear inference to be taken from correspondence received from the Department of Education and Science was that the Government had decided that the Commission would not implement its statutory mandate.

That the Commission had never been properly enabled by the Government to fulfill satisfactorily the functions conferred on it by the Oireachtas.

That range of factors over which the Commission had no control, produced a real and pervasive sense of powerlessness, including:

the two-year delay on the issue of compensation for survivors of abuse eventually dealt with in the Residential Institutions Redress Act enacted in April 2002;

the two-year delay in the payment of legal costs of persons involved in the process eventually dealt with in the Act;

the Government handling of requests for the provision of adequate resources to enable the Investigation Committee to carry out its remit with reasonable expedition when the volume of allegations became known;

the Government decision in December 2002 to review the Commission's mandate which was to be completed in February 2003 but which has not yet been published;

the Government decision of December 2002 to agree in principle to the provision of additional resources was made contingent on the outcome of the review, and so had proved meaningless.

That the cumulative effect of those factors effectively negatived the guarantee of independence conferred on the Commission and militated against it being able to perform its statutory functions.

That it was not possible to deduce the nature of the functions which were likely to be conferred on the Commission post review, save that they would be substantially different from its then functions.

That it was not possible to predict whether the chairperson might be precluded from continuing her work on the Investigation Committee or to predict the duration of the review.

That the investigations which the Commission had conducted up to the time of her resignation might transpire to be redundant or incorrectly focused in the light of a future unknown mandate.

That to abide, without protest, the outcome of the further radical review then proposed, would be a complete abrogation of the independence which the Oireachtas intended the Commission to enjoy and would undermine the credibility of the chairperson.

That the ongoing uncertainty was detrimental to the interests of the persons who alleged that they suffered abuse and had the potential to give rise to unfairness and injustice toward individuals against whom allegations had been made.

That there was a risk that a Commission which worked first to one mandate and then to a substantially different one, would leave itself open to legal challenge.