Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

I support the amendment. Deputy McGrath was right when he spoke of the people affected. When we open the newspapers every day, we read reports of young people being abused. Some of those are now getting the opportunity to go to court, tell their stories and bring to account the people who abused them as children.

I share Deputy Gogarty's concerns about the issue of the Ombudsman. We were given assurances by the Minister for Education and Science when discussing the Bill that the difficulty surrounding the Office of the Ombudsman would be resolved by future legislation. I hope the Minister stands over those assurances. It would be terrible if, due to an error, the Office of the Ombudsman were not able to investigate causes of concern. I congratulate Senator Ryan for spotting the error.

The legislation is positive and will, I hope, allay some of the concerns of the groups that made submissions throughout the process. There are still many people who are critical of how the process was set up. They are still angry, but the anger has much to do with the failure of the State up to now to take on board the hurt and anguish suffered by these people. They are also concerned that we get it right this time. I hope the situation is better now than it was at the beginning of this process.

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