Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Before I moved the Adjournment last night I commented that it was unusual that in the debate so far no attention had been paid to the indemnity deal made between the Government and the religious congregations. I wish to avail of the few minutes available to me to comment on that.

To continue the point I was making last, to some extent or another, all of us in this society are to blame. The State must be indicted on the most grave charges, but Ministers did not savagely beat the children. Ministers did not sexually abuse the children. Members of the religious congregations did all of those things and committed crimes against little children with bestial delight. Then they lied. They covered up. They were still lying five days before Mr. Justice Ryan published his report. Today's Government was still defending the religious and shielding them from making appropriate restitution right up to Michael O'Brien's powerful intervention on "Questions and Answers".

Even after the religious congregations themselves collapsed in the face of public opinion - if they have collapsed - Deputy Michael Woods, like the Japanese soldier who emerged from the forest 40 years after the war was over, was still defending them. It has been a most inglorious chapter in our history. Our carefully constructed self image is in tatters. How could it have happened? Why did the clerical authorities allow it to happen? Why did Deputy Bertie Ahern's Government move to protect the religious from making other than minimal restitution and denigrate those of us who fought to make the religious accountable? Deputy Bertie Ahern's apology, which emerged coincident with the "States of Fear" programmes, I take at face value and compliment him on responding so positively on behalf of us all. At the time his apology and the principle of the subsequent redress Bill had the support of all sides of the House. The indemnity deal was never brought to the House. It was concluded in secrecy by Deputy Michael Woods on his last day as Minister for Education and Science. He excluded even the Attorney General and his staff. The Cabinet nodded it through at its final meeting. The deal imposed on the taxpayer unlimited exposure but capped the contribution of the religious congregations at £100 million punts. That sum could be made up in part by property transactions, some of which had already taken place. In return, the religious congregations, whose members had perpetrated the abuse, were indemnified from any costs that might arise from court actions against the perpetrators.

My colleague, Deputy Róisín Shortall, was the first to expose the terms of the sweetheart deal. The record shows that she raised the critical questions in an Adjournment debate on 20 June 2002, immediately on the new Government taking office and three weeks after the deal was done. Time after time thereafter I used Leaders' Questions to highlight the woeful deficiencies of an unorthodox secret deal that was more concerned with protecting the religious congregations than the taxpayer. For example, on no fewer than 13 occasions in 2003 I pursued the matter in the face of obfuscation, misinformation and downright untruths. My argument was straightforward; there must be accountability - the religious congregations were getting away with murder and their assets were not even subjected to audit, the exposure of the taxpayer was unknown and could be as much as €1 billion, the indemnity was drafted in the offices of Arthur Cox at the direction of the religious congregations, the Attorney General was excluded and the Department of Finance had recommended a 50:50 apportionment of costs. The then Taoiseach either denied each and all of those charges or muddied the waters in his own inimitable way.

It is now established that the "Woods deal" was suspect and is in any case a lousy deal morally, legally and politically. The Department of Finance had indeed sought a 50:50 sharing of costs. The indemnity was drawn up by Arthur Cox solicitors for the religious. There was no audit of the assets of the religious congregations. The Attorney General was excluded. The cost to the taxpayer will exceed €1 billion. The Comptroller and Auditor General found:

While the teams of negotiators were meeting, in the series of meetings which reached an impasse in October 2001, the State's team included representation from the Office of the Attorney General. However, from October, 2001, to April, 2002, the Office of the Attorney General was not represented at meetings with the congregations and had no contact with those negotiating on behalf of the State.

In several replies to me in this House, Deputy Bertie Ahern denied that the Attorney General was excluded and as recently as the week of publication of the Ryan report, Deputy Michael Woods was still denying it in this House. Both Deputy Bertie Ahern and Deputy Woods could be relied on to muddy the waters by claiming that the Dáil discussed the approved deal. They knew it was easy to confuse the public as between the redress Bill and the indemnity deal. The Dáil debated the Residential Institutions Redress Bill but the Dáil did not debate the entirely separate, non-statutory scheme entered into between the State and 18 religious congregations. According to that scheme, the State was now underwriting any possible future liability of the contributing congregations arising from court claims, regardless of whether those claims had been notified to the redress board and an award offered and accepted.

Day after day I pursued the issue with the then Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, in this Chamber. The record shows that even in the year 2003 I was alone in doing so. The reason the Labour Party was alone was the same old reason what happened was allowed to happen, namely, that Members of the House did not want to be accused of challenging a still influential church. The record shows that Deputy Bertie Ahern answered my reasonable questions by claiming that my purpose was to bankrupt the religious orders. The same charge was repeated around the country and on several occasions I directly encountered it in various places. It is that excessive deference and submissiveness to the Catholic Church that allowed the culture of abuse in the residential institutions to fester for decades.

The religious superiors were confident in their power. Senior politicians and senior civil servants were submissive or worse. As former Deputy Liz O'Donnell told this House: "The phone calls between All Hallows and Government Buildings must stop." Deputy Ahern, for his part, made plain, in an untypically sharp response to Liz O'Donnell that, as far as he was concerned, the calls would continue.

Perhaps for the first time in our history, public opinion wants an end to the deference and a separation of church and State. Even in this debate, it has been noticeable that there has been so little craw thumping. There has been a nod in the direction of the good done by some religious, which is only fair because some religious have made an incomparable contribution to our society. However, the congregations must be told in no uncertain terms by the elected representatives of the people that they are not above the law, and they must pay for the crimes of those in their ranks exposed in such a measured way in the Ryan report. We, in this House, cannot ignore the conclusion that when complaints were brought to their attention "they chose to protect the institution and the reputation of the congregation rather than the children".

That we were a poor country, even an impoverished one, was no excuse for the brutalising of our children. They were, of course, as Deputy Lynch said last night, the children of the poor. The respected theologian, Dr. Enda McDonogh, made a similar point when he noted the class nature of the provision made by different categories of the religious for the education of the young. Senator Eoghan Harris was essentially in the same territory in his thesis on land, nationality and religion.

Have we left the era of horrors behind us? I do not know. There are still very serious questions about child protection today. I do know it was only in the very recent past that a young woman civil servant, who believed she had tripped across the abuse of children in State-run institutions, was effectively forced to resign her job. I refer Members to an article in the Sunday Independent of two weeks ago. I have raised the case of this young woman, Loretta Byrne, in this House on a number of occasions. She was a civil servant in the Department of Education who believed she had uncovered a matter that was deeply disturbing. She ended up in the Department of Finance and was subsequently dismissed from that Department.

We have a lot to answer for. I complimented the Taoiseach last night on a fine speech. I agree with him on its conclusions and the wish that it should never happen again. In the interim, however, it is the task of the Minister for Education and Science and others to ensure there is a dedicated trust through which the religious congregations are required to make a proportionate contribution so that the sum of the injury and damage done to the people in these institutions can be redressed.

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