The meeting between survivors of childhood abuse and Scottish education minister Angela Constance last week was private, but several of those present have mentioned one moment which silenced the room.

Helen Holland, an abuse victim herself and prominent campaigner with the group In Care Abuse Survivors in Scotland (Incas) reminded Ms Constance that she had met two members of the Incas board 18 months ago. "George died last year and I attended the funeral of Nicky last week" she said.

Ms Holland was making the point that some people have been calling for the lifting of a time bar affecting civil claims for more than 16 years, and for many victims time is running out.

Many survivors are still unhappy that victims of abuse in non-residential settings will not be covered by the inquiry. Some want immediate compensation for those who may die without seeing any more significant form of redress.

But Ms Constance might well feel that the sad anecdote supports her argument that the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry should be focused and kept to a tight time schedule so that those who may not have long left to live have a chance of seeing some kind of justice.

She cannot change the inquiry's remit, she says, although there seems to be a lack of clarity about why she cannot. After all the name of the inquiry was itself only changed last week, when Chair Susan O'Brien announced that it was no longer to be into just historical child abuse, but any residential care abuse up to December 2014.

The inquiry is designed to learn lessons, to ask what went wrong and how can such betrayals be prevented from happening again. But surely if you look only at how child abuse was carried out in residential institutions, you may be missing vital lessons from other care settings?

Fundamentally, Ms Constance is in a difficult spot logically and emotionally.

It looks as if someone abused by a care worker before 1964 will never be able to make a damages claim, but someone abused by the same worker after that date would be. Someone abused by a priest in a residential school will be covered by the inquiry but not if that abuse was restricted to pastoral settings.

What is the minister to say to the adult who was that abused child, to explain these inconsistencies? And how can that feel like anything other than discrimination when you are on the sharp end of it?