Niall Collins (Limerick West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this important debate.

The details unfolding of the events from Roscommon represent for all of us a case of extreme depravity. Unfortunately, it is not the first case that we have had to endure and deal with in this country but I hope it will be the last. We will recall that during 2008 we got the detail of an extreme case which unfolded in Austria, involving a father and daughter. What should and, I am sure, does unite all of us is a search for the truth and the background of the Roscommon case which will come out in time to ensure that lessons can be learned and that measures can be put in place to ensure that it does not recur.

From my point of view, there are many questions. There are questions for us as legislators, for society as a whole, for the educational authorities, for the church, and, obviously, for the HSE.

There has rightly been a bottom-up approach to child protection adopted by many voluntary groups such as sporting organisations and clubs throughout the country where they have put in place child protection policies and procedures and, indeed, subjected their staff, volunteers and club officers who interact on a real-time basis with children to training on how to behave and interact on a proper basis.

I also acknowledge the work being done by Deputy O'Rourke and her all-party committee on the important area of child protection. She gave us a brief insight into the difficulty the committee is experiencing in trying to come up with an adequate wording. She outlined the difficulty and, hopefully, in time we will have a formula of words which will address the situation.

The question we find ourselves debating is what form an inquiry should take. While a tribunal or a commission of inquiry has many advantages and may get to the truth, it would not be my first favourite option. If one looks at the experience of commissions and, indeed, tribunals over the years in this country, in general there have been many difficulties, although I am not saying all of them were the same. There is often a row about the terms of reference, then there is the issue of who gets representation and, indeed, who pays for that representation, and then there is usually a wrangle about discovery and privilege of documents. Most of it gets overtaken by lawyers and moves from the arena where the commission or tribunal is sitting into the courts where, unfortunately, it remains for a long period of time. This costs a great deal of money, frustrates the process and often hinders the evolution of the full story.

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