This is one of the places in the Report where a human rights analysis would have been very welcome. https://twitter.com/maeveorourke/status/1354565835348725761

Ireland is not the only country where financial redress has been paid for past wrongs. A good place to start is the work of Pablo de Grieff.

But redress, especially on the Irish model, is not 'the present generation paying for the wrongs of earlier generations'.

Redress payments in Ireland have generally been so small that we can't even say that those payments equalise the positions of the descendants of those who were institutionalised and those who were not.

Redress - as many survivors' groups point out - is not compensation either. This is not only because the payments are so small, but because no amount of money can compensate for the abuses involved.

That is why, for example, survivors of mother and baby homes are asking for a package of reparations, with financial redress as just one part. Other reparative actions include access to records, further investigations, identification of remains, commemoration etc

Some of the broader investment needed to serve survivors' needs, (and guarantee non-repetition of past harms) would benefit the whole of society, if their experience was used to inspire new social programmes.

Many of the harms suffered were rooted in poverty and institutionalisation. Ireland would be better if we invested to guarantee non-repetition of those harms.

If we want to think about paying directly for past wrongs, we might want to think about restitution. There are plenty of examples of corporations repaying money earned by their predecessors through human rights abuse, especially forced labour.

Those sorts of payments would come, in large part, from the resources of culpable religious congregations and orders. Unfortunately, experience suggests they are most likely to be achieved through litigation.

So, a big part of reparations would be removing obstacles to litigation by affected survivors. These include barriers to class action, costs, limitations periods & tolerance of non-cooperation by defendant congregations (especially re: vicarious liability).

By the way, when I say *forced labour above, I don't mean "forced-but-ordinarily-waged-labour". I mean reproductive labour too. Women's birthing, mothering labour.