The Government has been accused of turning its back on the victims of institutional abuse in its attempt to change the operating procedures of the Laffoy Commission.
Aislinn, the association for the healing of institutional abuse, said the Government's insistence on a sampling approach to hearing the cases of the abused, was a "stab in the back" and had eroded 20 years of work.
In an emotional press conference this afternoon, the group said the proposal was a insult to the victims and threatened to rob the body of its central purpose.
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The group's co-ordinator, Ms Christine Buckley, said she was in "utter despair" at the events of the last three weeks.
She said the proposals "fly in the face of the undertakings made by the Government" and have eroded whatever goodwill the Government had gained from its public apology to victims in 1999.
"We have been sold down the swanee," she said.
In a meeting on Monday with victims group, the Department of Education insisted on a sampling approach to the commission's investigation work. This would see only a selected number of cases being heard at the Commission in its new form.
Ms Buckley said the group would never agree to sampling. "How dare they decide to cherry pick our destroyed childhoods, our destroyed lives," she said.
To propose this is an insult to the victims and showed an absolute lack of understanding of the issue, she said.
Ms Buckley said: "All the victims want is to be able to face their abuser and ask 'Why?'".
To hear the abuser say: "None of what I did was your fault".
Ms Buckley said the process was never about money, but whenever the issue is mentioned by the Government it is in reference to compensation.
She said the Government and the religious orders have made secret deals behind the backs of victims.
Ms Buckley accused the Government and the religious orders of "playing havoc" with people's lives.
She said she now felt her meetings with the Government and the Minister of Education, Mr Noel Dempsey, had been "waste of time".
She said the whole process had to be taken out of the remit of the Department of Education and accused Mr Dempsey of not being able "to listen, hear or empathise" with victims of abuse.
Another Aislinn member, Mr Glenn Gannon, said his identity as a human being was stolen from him when he entered one of these institutions.
"My family, my name were taken from me and I was given a number," he said.
To try and categorise us as so many statistics again will destroy our lives again, he said referring to the sampling approach.
