NORTHERN IRELAND/AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

THE biggest public inquiry into child abuse ever held in the UK has opened with at least 60 Australians listed as witnesses.

Such has been the outpouring of complaints from former child migrants sent to Australia in the 1940s and 1950s, an investigative team from Northern Ireland will be dispatched to interview them personally later this year as the inquiry proceeds.

The $35 million Northern Ireland government-backed Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry is looking at systemic failings in duty of care to children in institutional care in Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1995.

In his opening remarks, inquiry chairman retired High Court judge Sir Anthony Hart told Banbridge Courthouse in County Down in Northern Ireland, the inquiry would be conducted “without fear or favour” and would be hearing from 434 people in person or in writing many with harrowing claims of abuse.

“Not only will their…