Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

I have been a Member of the Dáil for more than 30 years. The Ryan report contains the saddest litany of shameful abuse ever debated during my time in this House. What we have before us is a catalogue of crimes against children to which our only reaction can be utter revulsion.

In many ways, we are discussing our domestic policy. While it is true that children were not consigned to the gas chambers, it is evident that they were condemned to exist for many years in institutions in which they were starved, beaten, abused, humiliated and, above all, treated as less than human beings. In many ways, that attitude resembles the Nazis' approach when they established the gas chambers. We must ask how this was allowed to happen.

I am aware the representatives of each of the religious institutions and the Taoiseach on behalf of the State have said "mea culpa". However, each of us, as representatives of society, must also expressly say "mea maxima culpa" because I do not think these events could have taken place without the knowledge of society. There is a danger in excoriating the religious congregations and the State for what happened while ignoring the responsibility of society as a whole. We cannot fob off to the religious orders and the Department of Education and Science our responsibility as a people who knew, or should have known, about what was happening but ignored or acquiesced to abuse. It is easy for us to shovel the orders and the Department into the dock and find them guilty without acknowledging the attitude of society. Why, for example, did girls go the Magdalen laundries? They went because they had nowhere else to go.

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