Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

Like other Members, I thank the Ryan commission and Mr. Justice Ryan for the report, which clearly vindicates the claims made over so many years by those who found themselves, at a young age, in residential institutions in this State and who were subjected to barbaric, inhuman treatment which no child, in any country, should ever experience. We could describe what occurred in our residential institutions as the systemic torture of children.

Unlike other Members, I cannot say the revelations in the Ryan commission report came as a surprise to me. I should make a declaration of interest. A partner in my own law firm, Mr. Tim O'Sullivan, has represented more than 100 victims of abuse before the Redress Board. I am aware of many of the experiences victims had, from my meetings with some and from being present at meetings they held many years ago when they were crying out for recognition and help. My firm has experienced how the church and religious congregations dealt with victims of sexual and physical abuse and sought, until very recently, to deny all responsibility, as well as the credibility of those who made claims.

In view of my position as a lawyer, I have a duty of confidentiality to clients. However, certain individuals have shown great courage, publicly told their story and laid the foundation for many other people to come forward to explain what happened to them. One of those was Mr. Andrew Madden, who was represented in the early 1990s by the firm of which I am a partner. Mr. Madden claimed he had been sexually assaulted as an altar boy by a priest named Ivan Payne. Court proceedings were taken on his behalf. He was the first individual to take a civil action against an alleged perpetrator of clerical abuse in this country. He also took an action against the then Archbishop of Dublin. Proceedings were issued by Mr. Andrew Madden and he subsequently told his story and the outcome of the proceedings publicly. That is why I feel at liberty to make reference to them.

Mr. Madden's experience is a microcosm of that of so many people. With great courage, he went to the courts. His claims were heavily resisted but they were ultimately settled outside the door of the court. I am not breaching confidence by stating that under a confidentiality clause he was not permitted to publicly state the outcome of his proceedings or the compensation he was paid. However, Andrew Madden breached this clause. As his lawyers, we had to advise him that he had to abide by the clause but he went to the newspapers because he believed that if he remained silent, others who had been the victims of abuse would never be told. As their stories were becoming known, he hoped he would give them the courage to come forward and, more important, that by going public he would ensure action that had not previously been taken would be taken by the State and church authorities and children would be protected who might otherwise find themselves the victims of abuse.

What was learned from Andrew Madden's case was that once he came forward, a number of other men came forward who, as altar boys, had been abused by Ivan Payne. It was only through Andrew Madden going public that Ivan Payne was prosecuted through the courts by the Garda Síochána and Director of Public Prosecutions and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.

What was extraordinary about the case was that the abuse suffered by Andrew Madden had been reported when he was a child and Ivan Payne, as a priest, had been moved by the Archbishop of Dublin from one parish to another and proceeded to abuse altar boys in two different parishes. When the church realised he could not be left to deal with altar boys he found himself in a different position. By sheer coincidence, at the time our firm was representing Andrew Madden, I was representing a young woman who was seeking to have a church annulment from the marriage tribunal in Drumcondra. She went to have a private interview in the tribunal and when I subsequently asked who had interviewed her, I learned to my astonishment that Ivan Payne, the person who had been transferred out of two parishes and had been abusing altar boys, was operating in the marriage tribunal in Drumcondra, adjacent to Archbishop's House, where he had engaged in conversations with men and women seeking annulments, some of which conversations required that they discuss with him the intimate details of their married lives. I found that extraordinary.

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