The three Irish monetary redress programmes this chapter explores are a study in contrasts. The industrial schools programme (the RIRB) began in 2003. The cost of that large programme prompted the 2014 advent of Caranua, an ancillary programme redressing the consequences of injurious care. Caranua was preceded in 2013 by a programme responding to structural injuries suffered by survivors of the Magdalene laundries. The differences in costs and size, and the difficulties confronted in delivering these Irish programmes provide valuable evidence for comparative analysis.

For most of the twentieth century, Ireland had a system of residential institutions – known as Industrial Schools – for children. These institutions were funded and overseen by the Irish state, and run by the religious orders of the Catholic Church. Though the institutions were intended to provide children with vocational education for industrial employment and to respond to perceived problems of poverty and anti-social behaviour, in reality children were incarcerated in these residential institutions and physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. This chapter traces how Irish culture has galvanised official state responses to this history, and how contemporary narrative practices and technologies, in particular digital humanities, can facilitate greater understanding of Ireland’s difficult past.