Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to contribute to this debate and empathise with the thousands of people who turned out to visit the Dáil yesterday.

Prevailing conditions increased the likelihood of abuse in the years prior to and during the period covered by the Ryan report. Some of the causes of abuse still exist; that must change. Intervention at causal level is seriously needed. There was a lack of information on the make-up of humans and on how our brains and organisms develop. Misinformation was the norm. What really drives humans was not understood until recently. Even in the past 50 years, improvements in understanding have moved towards a new place in the history of such knowledge.

In the past, punishment, shaming, and practices likely to result in widespread abuse were the norm. Practices crystallised in the early 1500s as the way to avoid abuse remained in place, yet they were doomed to fail. During all that time, there was a serious lack of understanding as to the emotional needs of children and a shortfall in knowledge as to the damage caused by poor or defective early emotional development. These deficiencies carried over into adulthood. Thus, even in adulthood, systematic abuse of young persons was acceptable, if not the norm. For example, it was considered OK to shout at and hit a defenceless child, but it was illegal to punch a six-foot boxer on the street. Similar treatment of a grown up was illegal. The ash plant was well worn as it became a tool of therapeutic destruction that was systematic and normalised. The leather strap was manufactured; it did not merely just arrive. Until a few years ago, a punishment tool hung in a store and all attempts to get it taken down met with rebuff. Abuse was normalised.

In the past there was a suppression of our natural sensuality by shaming, culminating in sensuality being equated with sexuality. Religious rules diverted attention from the serious damage that abuse caused and, instead, focused attention on sin. Thus generations grew up trying not to damage an indestructible God rather than loving humanity. Celibacy was enforced, punishment and shaming were in vogue and abusive behaviours were driven underground. They emerged in institutions and in the fences, lay-bys, back rooms and hidden places. There they grew, fermented and exploded, so that was done openly in the 1550s was now under cover. The by-product was that these locations became a training ground and our people learned about it.

Celibacy was enforced, thus demeaning women, procreation and the evolved or created sensuality necessary for our survival, even the sensuality needed to know that we hurt. This was an abusive decision which could qualify as a serious human rights violation. It flew in the face of the desirability of a growth facilitating relationship, a fact now accepted by almost all of humanity. Thus growth was denied to priests. Growth invariably occurs in a deep relationship. Priests and brothers were expected to be growth facilitators, despite having been themselves separated from deep, loving, growth-facilitating relationships. Rational thinking was turned upside down and replaced by patterned behaviour, as if we were computers. Women were barred from the ministries and forgiven for the activity of procreation, thus tainting the most natural and necessary of our actions.

Sexual abuse was normalised, sin was forgiven, and we were abused again. Young people were so exposed to abuse that by the time they reached their workplaces, they were highly skilled abusers, hiding from God and man and yet not exactly knowing why. The barrier or only brake to abuse in existence was fear of God. Fear is, of course, the direct polar opposite to love and care of humanity. In the case of our young people, abuse was guaranteed to occur.

Where fear is the obstacle, love is absent. It is the care and love we might have for each other that establishes levels of abuse, not fear. Abuse was so common that it acquired normality status. While this training ground was the initiation for all of us to our interaction with humans, unfortunately it fermented further in the seminaries and centres where larger numbers gathered. We know now that numbers have an effect on crime and abuse.

In those times, classism was rife; poor children went to institutions and the rich went elsewhere. Classism was such that it was all right to abuse the poor. Brothers came from the poor and were likely to suffer abuse, if not already abused. Abusers are, and were frequently, persons who were abused themselves. Abuse was normalised. If one's parents and elders abused, then God was not even a player in the field. This caused a contradiction on the child's perception screen. Adults said that God was to be "feared" and "loved", two words that do not belong in the one sentence with God. Worse than that, the perception was that if adults were abusing, that must be OK with God. This would be a fair enough crude summary of the dilemma facing a young person. However, young persons generally became adults and by then they were able to sit with the contradiction: adults are right, adults abuse; thus, God must be wrong. Therefore, abuse seemed all right.

While this misinformation and inaccurate policy was in motion, children came to be assessed through opaque lenses. It was normal to ask "What is wrong with that child?", but the question should have been a bifocal one. It should have asked what was wrong with the system and what were the early developmental deficiencies or influences on the child. It should have asked what effect these had on the specific child. Similarly, it also became popular to label children with disorders whereas new information abounded as to the cause of behaviours. Thus, the number of recorded disorders might well have reduced, but instead it was increased and now amounts to over 300. Perhaps they should have gone to Specsavers.

Children became adults with developmental deprivations which were of a character as to affect their interaction with other humans. There was no method to assess this, even as some of these adults entered institutions as carers. When we then employed or used staff who had either been abused and traumatised, or were already abusing, we did not have an adequate or sufficiently informed basis for assessment. Nor is there a comprehensive method now. Garda clearance does not cover the actual need. It covers criminal behaviours and the like but it misses early deprivations, traumas and abuses that render the person, perhaps, unsuitable. We need it now.

Discrimination against children was systematic. Biological children remain supported for life whereas foster children were and are thrown to the storms at a young age. That State policy was and is a serious human rights violation. The middle class struggled, the poor died and their children, perhaps already abused by adults, went to institutions. Let us be caringly direct. The poor children are poor but they also suffer discrimination and that has been State policy, since we signed the Treaty to this day.

Education of our deserving parents in terms of favourable and significant discoveries was not in tandem with them. Thus, the effect of early effective interaction was inadequately presented and not employed in its needed form. We needed to prioritise our future generation. Parents deserved the newest information and help. The Judiciary and the educational systems needed it and they need it now more than ever. It is not enough to have any system based on outdated knowledge.

Sexual discrimination and abuse of women was rife and undeniable evidence as to sexual orientations was abused. All this and more contributed to the abuse in the institutions. Males were oppressed in that they were forced to fight. Women were oppressed. Boys were told not to cry. Women were told to love, a desirable objective, but love is not found by force. Care of our people is separated from the idea of love and this is systematic. Love has good definitions but they were thrown to the winds with the bath water. The child went with it. Care systems forbade the use of the word "love".

Then and now, children were not listened to. Defenceless children had their right to be heard silenced. Yet it is the child who calls to the mother or father and makes a parent of a person. When those children had no longer a mother or father to plea to and engage with in a necessary growth facilitating manner, they were sent to institutions, where we, as a nation, funded as little as one staff to perhaps 30 children. Sometimes one staff member dealt with 100 children. That was a result of our lack of knowledge as to need and how to develop. It was a cause of significant suffering and developmental damage. We pay the price of that in crime.

Thus, the very voice and plea that is now known to be so important was oppressed. It is a serious oppression. The right to a co-creative interaction between parent and child was denied. Both parent and child are victims of the one blow even if landed in innocence and ignorance. The right to co-creative developmental interaction was severed even between child and carer.

It is so significant and sacred to note that each person who talks of their journey can link their ability to survive and to love to some loving act they experienced. Some say that of the institutions. It may be said that the loving kind deed for some of these children saved them and us from worse.

Mothers and infants were oppressed particularly in the past. We hear that children and mothers and families were protected from the poverty and shame by not being allowed to be born. To kill in desperation the newborn must have been horrific and yet that is what we inflicted upon mothers when we criminalised and Satanised births out of wedlock. Children were called horrible names, and we only fell short of stoning single mothers. They are still somewhat oppressed and a rational approach has not been employed. Rather it is blowing in the storms, by default.

Given the serious influences operating in the days past, we now need to address what to do for the future. There is need to take a very serious look at some glaring policy options. To avoid in the future what is now occurring to an alarming extent and what occurred as set out in the Ryan report we need to integrate new findings. Findings and new information will be much concerned with the decade of the brain discoveries and phenomenal discoveries as to the influences on human development. This will have influence on our educational and crime policies and will affect our approach to policies to address the findings of the Ryan report.

There is one specific concern that we will need to address with integrity. It is now well known that persons who were subject to abuse are in need of significant intervention and therapy. This is needed to address the damage caused but also to satisfactorily address the risk of their having seen abuse as normal, and thereby being a risk. It is also known that persons who were adjacent to, heard, or witnessed the abuse of others are affected and are likely to suffer greater consequences than the direct recipient of the abuse. This is significant information as it means that we have to thoroughly assess the totality of the damage caused by the abuse, and its current and future risk to both the persons abused to date and to the general population. We have a serious obligation to asses this in the most thorough way to break parts of the cycle of abusive normalisation. As the abuse in general and as early emotional developmental influences will have had other serious affects there is a need to assess the overall damage. We will have to treat the damaged and we will have to compensate them. There will need to be a cut-off point somewhere.

The question will loom and it will be educational, namely, what caused the abuse and will we prevent it now? This presents a current dilemma in terms of how to contain the problem and prevent it, in the knowledge that punishment, shaming and fear are more causal than curative. There will be a way forward that will bring containment with accompanying treatment, coupled with the correct approaches in all causal areas.

We need to get with it and integrate new information into our policies. It is not enough simply to react. President Obama may well be right when he says, "Yes we can" or "Is féidir linn". I say it differently. We can listen. If we do, only then can we say "Yes, we can".

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