Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to address the House on the matter of the third interim report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and related issues. Prior to commenting on the content of the report, it is necessary to remind the House that the Government is the first in the history of the State to listen to the victims of abuse, apologise to them on behalf of the State and take positive action to redress the wrongs inflicted on them in the past. Indeed, we are speaking in the House on this issue today only because the Taoiseach initiated a process of redress with an apology to victims of abuse in 1999. Since then, the Government has put in place a number of initiatives designed to assist former residents of the institutions in question.

In particular, we have put in place the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse which comprises a confidential committee, an investigation committee and a nation-wide programme of counselling. The latter is operated under the auspices of the health boards to providing a free counselling service to all victims of abuse in childhood. The Government has also established a redress scheme through which victims of abuse in residential care can receive financial compensation. The Residential Institutions Redress Board administers the scheme. The Government has also put in place proper channels of communication with survivor groups to ensure at all stages of this process engagement in a proper consultative process with survivors. Furthermore, outreach services are provided in the United Kingdom to enable survivors who moved to the UK to access all relevant information and advice.

There is no comparison between the Government's record and the record of the rainbow coalition Administration in assisting survivors of abuse. Not one member of the rainbow coalition Government took the time to meet the victims of abuse from Goldenbridge and the plight of former residents was, in effect, ignored. Not one strand of the various elements of redress now in place was initiated by any of the parties on the Opposition benches. While they may now consider they are entitled to criticise the efforts of the Government to provide redress in respect of the difficulties experienced by survivors of abuse, it might be more appropriate for the Opposition parties to ask why the pleas made to them in Government fell on deaf ears.

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