When abuse victims of the church-run industrial schools come before the Residential Institutions Redress Board (RIRB) their degree of suffering is evaluated under a points system.

In the first of four categories, they are marked on a scale from one to 25 depending on the severity of the abuse inflicted upon them. In addition, a maximum of 30 points are available for “a medically verified physical or psychiatric illness” and another 30 points for “psychosocial consequences”.

A final 15 points are available for “loss of opportunity” as the board assesses whether a complainant’s career has suffered. If a victim scores more than 70 points a payment is made from the highest award band: between €200,000 and €300,000 (£175,000 and £262,000).

Victims describe going through the marking scheme as “a gruelling interrogation”, because testimony can be challenged in minute detail. John Kelly, spokesman for the Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) group, said some victims have been asked to describe their abuser’s penis in order to test the truth of their allegations.

From the 12,436 victims who have received redress, 85% were awarded less than €100,000, meaning they scored 39 or less on the RIRB’s scale of hurt. If it was a school exam those results would be marked ‘F’, but many feel that it is the redress scheme itself that is a failure.

“Those 15 points for loss of future earnings equate to a maximum of €30,000 for the loss of a career,” said Raymond Bradley, a partner with Malcomson Law, which has represented victims at the redress hearings. “It’s rare to get any points under the future earnings category because the board deems that many of the people before it mightn’t have achieved much anyway.”

Bradley said that the scheme’s awards had been adequate for victims less severely affected by the abuse, but for those who suffered horrific abuse they were insufficient.

The scale of the damage done by the industrial schools was already apparent, given the 14,500 applications made to the redress scheme and the estimated final bill of €1.3 billion. But the fact that the religious orders had in 2002 agreed to contribute just €128m to that sum has always been a source of deep annoyance.

With the publication of the Ryan report 10 days ago, however, the full detail of the horror perpetrated on former residents by the religious orders was revealed. The scale of the abuse chronicled by the report meant that the limit on the religious orders’ contribution to compensation became an unacceptable affront.

Six days after maintaining that the 2002 deal was written in stone, the religious orders accepted that they must pay more. Will they now finally atone for their mistreatment of thousands of children? What will any extra money be spent on? And is it cash that the victims really want anyway?

A common thread among those familiar with the religious orders and their handling of abuse is cynicism about their willingness to face up to their guilt. “You need an Enigma machine to decipher what they are really saying,” said Kelly.

For others it is far clearer. “First off, don’t trust anything they say,” said Thomas Doyle, an American Catholic priest who campaigns for the church to address systematic sexual abuse. “If the orders were serious about fully compensating the victims of abuse, it would have happened by now.”

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