Brendan Ryan (Labour)

About ten or 15 years ago, I attended a meeting and a question arose at the end about young people and their safety. A Garda chief superintendent was in attendance and he said that, in his view, most of the talk about child sex abuse that was heard in Ireland around 15 years ago was put about by people who wanted to undermine the family. That was the view of a huge section of society until brave people forced us to confront what had really happened. This was done by the victims without much assistance from the rest of society. As this was done by the victims and because of the lives that were ruined by all of this and the harm that was done to people, once we finally acknowledged there was a scandal that had been buried for 30 to 40 years, the response, to which they were entitled, was a speedy, generous one, based on protecting the victims from further suffering.

The Government has made an extraordinary mess of Ms Justice Laffoy's investigation and the equivocation, delays and ambiguity have done the opposite. They have made the lives of victims more painful and the view of society and how we deal with our victims even more tainted. I hope that, from now on, the qualities of speed, generosity and justice will determine Government attitudes to this whole shameful event.