Northern Ireland's orphanages and homes operated a policy of forcibly transporting children to Australia until the 1950s, a long-running inquiry into child abuse at these institutions will hear on Monday.

Sixty-six former residents have given evidence of how they were sent across the world without their consent between 1946 and 1956. Many of those who have come forward will give evidence via video link over what happened to them under the scheme.

The migration scheme to Australia will be examined at the historical institutional abuse inquiry held at Banbridge courthouse in County Down.

The public inquiry is the largest held into such institutions like orphanages anywhere in the UK. Thirteen Catholic and state-run institutions are under scrutiny.

The inquiry will be told that the transport of children from institutions in Northern Ireland mainly to similar homes in western Australia was part of UK government policy at the time.

The inquiry's chairman, Sir Anthony Hart, is a retired senior high court judge who practised in Northern Ireland. The other members of the inquiry are Geraldine Doherty, former head of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work in Scotland, and David Lane, formerly the director of social services in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England.

Among the institutions under scrutiny is the state-run Kincora Boys Home in east Belfast. Hart has revealed that much of the state material on the home remains at the Home Office and cannot be disclosed to his inquiry. There have been persistent allegations that convicted paedophiles who ran the school were being blackmailed by British intelligence and Special Branch officers and recruited as informers in the early 1970s when the Troubles erupted.

There have been demands from MPs, Amnesty International and victims of sexual abuse at Kincora to include its history in a promised Westminster inquiry into establishment figures involved in paedophile rings in Britain.