Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

The Taoiseach has not answered my questions relating to the pre-1990 period. I must ask him again, if, for example, he believes that it was right for the aforementioned councillor to only be supported by one other councillor. Is there not a veil of shame over the lack of political response when the information came to light? This information has been coming to light over a number of years, since the mid-1990s. Much of what is in this report would already have been known, one way or the other, though perhaps not in the graphic and horrific detail that is printed here. A large amount of information was already in the public domain.

The register for people considered unsafe to work with children is still languishing under the heading of promised legislation. The Taoiseach has said this is due to a blockage because the Northern Ireland Assembly is not up and running. However, the PSNI has structures in place and has a handbook or manual on how to deal with people who come to it reporting incidents of paedophilia or of someone considered unsafe to work with children arriving in an area.

Will the Taoiseach now make up for a lot of lost time? Will he put in place a system, like the one in existence in the North, a type of vetting procedure which can tell a person if there is a conviction of, or suspicion around, an individual? In the South, only the health boards and a limited number of organisations, such as Barnardo's, can avail of such a vetting procedure. Youth clubs, dance clubs, scouting groups and so forth cannot avail of the vetting procedure. When will it become available? If someone running a crèche wants to vet staff and calls the gardaí, he or she will be told that the gardaí do not have the resources.

This is a matter of grave urgency and this report makes all the more stark the fact that the Government has not acted and responded in the way it should. We should have mandatory reporting of sex abuse allegations and we should have the resources in place so that people can be vetted. At the moment, neither of these is in place and events like those described in this report could happen all over again.

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