Just six of out more than 350 cases of alleged
sexual abuse in schools have been settled by the State under a State
compensation scheme. The scheme was set up last year after Louise
O’Keeffe won her case in January 2014 in the European Court of Human
Rights (ECHR), following a 20-year legal battle.
The court ruled that the State was liable for abuse carried out by Ms O’Keeffe’s teacher at a national school in west Cork
in the 1970s, when she was eight years old. The State’s compensation
scheme applies to abuse that took place before 1991, when
child-protection measures were introduced, subject to the statute of
limitation.