Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I appreciate that Members of the House only received the report when we were dealing with leaders' questions yesterday. I had a chance to read a very large part of it last night, particularly the accounts of the witnesses; I had obviously read the recommendations prior to the Cabinet meeting. As I said yesterday, the report is a catalogue of serial abuse and gross dereliction of duty in the diocese of Ferns. It is shocking to everyone's sense of how our children should be protected. As I said yesterday, our thoughts go to the victims and their families and to the brave people who came forward. As Mr. Justice Murphy acknowledged, the fact that they were prepared to bring out the full horror of their situations serves us to try to make sure, as Deputy Kenny said, that these things do not happen again.

Over the past probably 15 years as a result of the uncovering of many allegations, many of which have been proven, as many of the allegations in this report have been subsequently fully proven — and that is the position in other parts of the country and not only in the Dublin diocese — we have put on the Statute Book a number of laws, six or seven of which I mentioned yesterday, including the Protection for Persons Reporting Child Abuse Act, the Sex Offenders Act and many other pieces of legislation.

Mr. Justice Murphy has given us a job to do. That is the important task we have today, namely, the recommendations of the report, some of them requiring legislative measures, with which we must deal. We must deal with those as quickly as we possibly can. The Government agreed on that yesterday. Mr. Justice Murphy specified the areas with which we should deal. In his view, and the Government agrees with him, the High Court should be empowered to grant orders against persons, including priests, who are a risk to children in order to restrain such persons from occupying any employment that exposes them to children. That is an answer to one of Deputy Kenny's points. We are not only talking about priests but about everybody in a position of responsibility.

It was acknowledged in the report that many organisations that deal with children in one way or another where there is not direct supervision have protocols to follow. It would serve us well for everyone concerned to examine those protocols. They should not wait for legislation to be enacted to do that. Anybody dealing with such situations should examine them, and I am aware many organisations do. Dr. Roderick Murphy's report on sexual abuse in swimming some years ago issued recommendations which many sporting organisations have passed. The second issue is that the Oireachtas should consider creating a new criminal offence around the issue of failure to protect children from injury or sexual abuse. That is set out in the report. That is an area we will deal with.

Deputy Kenny asked about the issue of the national audit. To deal just with Dublin would not hold up and I do not intend to do that now. We said all along we would await this report and see how best to proceed to a national audit or some means of investigation and how that should be done. We have not worked out how best to do that, but we will. The Attorney General has been examining this issue. Whatever we do, whatever way we do it and whatever terms or whatever remit or whatever form, it has to be wider. Two issues in this are important. Mr. Justice Murphy has been impressed with and recommends that the 1996 framework document as implemented in Ferns should be dealt with on a national basis and, equally, that the recommendations in his report should be dealt with. Whatever we do around the country, and I do not wish to give a suggestion off the top of my head, we have to work that out and we will do that very quickly. I think that answers the Deputy's question.

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