Liz O'Donnell (Dublin South, Progressive Democrats)

I note that, true to form, the church has the temerity to claim €100,000 for its legal costs for dealing with the Ferns Inquiry. It is estimated that the church now faces a compensation bill of up to €250 million for clerical sex abuse resulting from existing claims and new claims set to emerge following publication of the Ferns Report. On top of this is the €128 million already paid to victims of abuse in children's homes run by religious orders.

Going back to the need for separation and objectivity between church and State, sadly, it is difficult to argue that this was the paradigm within which the negotiations on the indemnity deal struck by the Government with the religious orders took place. The cost to the orders was approximately €128 million, while the cost to the State would be a blank cheque, the State covering every lawsuit brought against the congregations for child abuse in reformatories and industrial schools. This is not to understate the share of responsibility the State has for some of the horrors that unfolded in these terrible places. The uncomfortable fact is that, in several cases taken in the courts recently by victims outside the redress scheme, the liability of the State has not been proven. Therefore, the blanket indemnity was over-generous on behalf of the State. Why? All roads lead to the deference of the special relationship. The result was a bad deal for the State and a good deal for the religious orders. Initial estimates of the potential liability were in the region of €250 million. Three or four times that amount may prove closer to reality in terms of liability to the taxpayer.

The special relationship has not served Ireland or its citizens well. It did not serve the victims of abuse well. For example, the implication in the Ferns Report is that complaints of sexual abuse made against priests to the gardaí were not handled appropriately. Some of the complaints were not even recorded in any Garda file. They were not investigated in an appropriate manner due, perhaps, to reluctance by members of the Garda to investigate allegations against members of the Catholic clergy. Again, the deference descended. Undoubtedly progress has been made in terms of the independence of the Garda now vis-À-vis the church and that must continue.

I welcome the Government's commitment to introduce new legislation as outlined by the Minister. However, legislation alone will not suffice. The law must operate and apply in a context of objectivity and cool detachment. Victims, family members, friends, Ministers, politicians, gardaí, judges and all of us must not be deterred or reluctant to speak out and to act robustly on these matters. I welcome the fact the Government will move to allow for barring orders against persons, including priests, who are a risk to children in order to restrain them from occupying any employment that exposes them to children, and provide for a new criminal offence of failing to protect children from injury, sexual abuse or reckless endangerment.

Whatever about the failure to protect I turn to the failure to prosecute cases of child abuse. For many years I have been baffled, in Opposition and in Government, by the non-prosecution of child abuse cases, even when validated by the health boards. As Opposition spokesperson for justice between 1992 and 1997 I tabled dozens of parliamentary questions to the Taoiseach for the DPP asking why the statistics were so skewed. Because of my interest over many years I became a contact point for many families exasperated because of such non-prosecutions. The DPP does not give reasons, leaving victims and their families distraught. In some cases it was due to delay. Frequently the accused would take civil action seeking to stop the prosecution on the grounds that delay in prosecution prejudiced the defendant's right to a fair trial. This device was successfully used by the notorious child rapist, George Gibney, who escaped prosecution and is now living abroad. Many abusers have availed of this device and it is the Judiciary, not the State, that has developed, to some extent, the law in this regard. We must change the law to state that delay alone cannot be used by the defendant in child abuse cases to stop a prosecution. The passage of time and thus delay is part and parcel of the crime of child abuse. Many victims will only disclose when they are safe or adult.

It is time for straight talking and respectful disengagement by the State from the Irish Catholic Church across all sectors. The enmeshed relationship has been characteristic of Irish life since the foundation of the State. One recalls de Valera's drafts of Bunreacht na hÉireann being edited page by page by the hierarchy and my party's unhappy but courageous suggestion of disengagement, known as taking God out of the Constitution.

One recalls also the many battles, mostly lost, between State and church, the pregnant women isolated and condemned from pulpits, dismissed from school, banished to Magdalen laundries, all the acts of a non-loving church; the unrelenting deference expected and given at State functions and in terms of diplomatic protocol in Ireland with the Papal Nuncio as numero uno in our diplomatic corps; the sweetheart deals for residential abuse; the non-extradition of Brendan Smyth; the related intrigue in the then Attorney-General's Office and the inactions of official A, issues never really resolved as to any church involvement; the millions of euro paid in private financial settlements by the archdiocese of Dublin and, perhaps, others; the abortion referenda and the wording negotiated with the bishops in advance and with the pro-life movement; the tip-toeing around the State ceremony marking the elevation of Desmond Connell to Cardinal in Dublin Castle, known as the Larkin affair; my own mauling when as a Minister of State I criticised the church authorities in 2001 for doing what this report has now found, transferring paedophile priests rather than exposing them to prosecution, that many priests so transferred went on to play leading roles in the child abuse scandals in the United States; the secrecy about money and possible movement offshore thereof; the hiring of the best lawyers by the church, the hardball played by them on behalf of the church that still goes on; and the deafening and unbelievable immoral silence of the Vatican on the Ferns Report. It is overwhelming and compelling — there is no other way to say it and the special relationship must end between the State and the Catholic Church. As a faith organisation it must look to rebuild, if it can, its relationship with its flock. As one who has irreconcilable differences with the institution of the church, as is probably obvious, unless it allows the laity in, including women, it is in terminal decline. To follow my logic, those are religious matters, not matters for the State.

See this speech in context