Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

When opening this debate, the Taoiseach told the House that the report of the Ryan commission made grim reading. He stated:

The catalogue of horror and terror that was visited over many years on children in the care of religious congregations, placed there by the State, is appalling beyond belief. It is made even more appalling, if that is possible, by the fact that those who perpetrated the abuse had promised to uphold and practise the gospel of love and belonged to congregations founded to serve the very noblest ideals.

I agree with the Taoiseach's summary. That these crimes against helpless children occurred is appalling beyond belief. That they were committed by people dedicated to the religious life, that they could continue for several decades without intervention by the State is appalling beyond belief. That children were half-starved and driven to desperate measures because the religious congregations wanted to turn a profit is appalling beyond belief.

We are not dealing with individual instances of deviant and outrageous behaviour. As the Ryan report makes clear, abuse was the culture of these institutions, not the exception. In the boys' institutions, sexual abuse was endemic. As regards physical abuse, the Taoiseach stated: "Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from". Whereas physical beatings were not systemic in girls' schools, girls suffered intolerable regimes and were subject to predatory sexual abuse. Where children mustered the courage to complain, they were at best ignored or, at worst, humiliated and told that they had brought it on themselves. Where inspections took place, like those carried out by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in our meat plants, the management was tipped off in advance.

If the rest of us feel shame, there must be people still alive who were alerted to these horrors when they were still serving in their professional lives and who did nothing. Similarly, some clerical authorities were told and did not want to know. Worse, it is plain that, in some cases, they were complicit in covering up. The Department of Education and Science has much to answer for. Its political masters who bent the knee with such alacrity to the ecclesiastical authorities of the day also have much to answer for. Irrespective of whether there was political collusion, it is clear from the Ryan report that the Department's officials did not investigate complaints, but sought instead to protect the religious congregations. As long ago as 1946 when Father Flanagan, an enlightened priest normally resident in the United States, did his famous tour of this country, his outspoken criticisms were condemned in the House as intemperate and unfounded.

In his address the Taoiseach properly highlighted the "disturbing level of emotional abuse by religious and lay staff in institutions". He stated: "Witnessing abuse of co-residents, seeing other children being beaten, seeing the humiliation of others and being forced to participate in beatings had a powerful and distressing impact, while separating siblings and restrictions on family contact were profoundly damaging for family relationships". There are depraved people in every society, but they are not put in charge of children in every society. In Ireland, we put them in charge of our most vulnerable children and then we forgot about them.

How did church and State in the land of saints and scholars collude to leave little children at the mercy of the monsters who ran these residential institutions? At a minimum, there was wilful neglect. At worst, in Joyce's phrase, Christ and Caesar were hand in glove to rid society of a problem that we did not want to address. As Deputy Kathleen Lynch mentioned, no one shouted "Stop". Virtually no one even asked questions. We did not want to know. We turned a blind eye to the slavery and worse in the Magdalen laundries. We turned our backs on the residential institutions that housed problems about which we did not want to know.

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