A letter of confession by a former Christian Brother who indecently assaulted 19 boys at a national school in Limerick in the 1960s was concealed for decades, forcing survivors to fight until 2021 for compensation, the Dáil has heard.Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the letter by Séan Drummond who sexually abused the children at Creagh Lane National School, dated back to February 1970.She called for an independent investigation into the concealment of the letter, to establish whether State agencies were aware of it, and the payment of full compensation to the survivors.Taoiseach Micheál Martin said “there is a shocking history of child sexual abuse in this country” and acknowledged the “life-changing impact” of abuse on the survivors of Drummond’s “heinous acts” and many others in schools and across society.McDonald said “correspondence shows that the Christian Brothers in Dublin and in Rome were fully aware of the abuse committed by Drummond”.“The confession letter was concealed. It was never given to the survivors, so the investigation, the criminal case, and the survivors’ civil cases were conducted without this key piece of evidence.”The survivors only launched their compensation claim after Drummond’s conviction. The State argued at the time that a crucial European Court of Human Rights ruling in the Louise O’Keeffe abuse case did not apply because there had not been a prior complaint.McDonald said the confession letter itself constituted a prior complaint.Had it been released “the men wouldn’t have had to fight until 2021 to access compensation. The concealment of Drummond’s confession letter resulted in further pain, trauma, and years of unspeakable distress for these survivors.”Drummond was sentenced in 2009 to two years imprisonment. He served five months, McDonald said, but the survivors and their families “serve a life sentence on account of this abuse. “And the worst thing of it, of course, is that they were faced down so viciously by the State.”A number of the survivors observed the exchange from the Dáil visitors’ gallery.McDonald said “we shouldn’t lose sight of what these men went through as children”. One of them, John Boland “spoke of the horrors endured. He said ‘you’d be called to the front of the class for some reason or another. He’d put his cloak around you and start interfering with you’.”“John told of a full school year, hoping just to get through the days without being molested. Creagh Lane National School should have been a safe place for children, but Seán Drummond turned it into a living in nightmare.”These men “were failed catastrophically as children, and treated appallingly as survivors, and for years they had to fight the state for recognition, justice, and full compensation. She said they had been locked out of the redress process for years, prevented from accessing compensation because they had not made a prior complaint of abuse even though their abuser had been convicted in court. “Many of the men are now in their 60s. Some have died without seeing full justice, and it’s now finally time to do right by them.”The Taoiseach pledged to take the issue further and “see how best to examine” and deal with the concealment of the letter.He said the scoping inquiry into historical sexual abuse in day and boarding schools run by religious orders was published in 2024 and recognised that those involved should be held accountable in terms of what happened and financially. He said he would discuss the issue with the Minister for Education.