Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

The involuntary committal of tens of thousands of innocent children to godless institutions run by religious congregations was a crime against humanity. That the State, the founding fathers of which had pledged to cherish the children of the nation, should be complicit in this inhumane treatment of its young within a few short years of its foundation is a shocking reflection on how high ideals can become corrupted. In a strange way, the writing was on the wall when, after the 1918 election the Provisional Government was established in 1919, the Deputies established in the Mansion House decided not to appoint a Minister for Education but to leave the portfolio to the churches; instead, they appointed a Minister for the Irish Language. The subservient role of the Irish State to the church in the area of the care of education of the young was set in stone from the very foundation of the State.

The Government and the religious orders have apologised to the victims but neither the Department of Education and Science, which had direct care for the education of children, nor the Garda Síochána, which was charged with their protection, have done so. I believe both should do so and that the Minister for Education and Science should immediately open a book of condolence in the Department of Education and Science, Marlborough Street, Dublin.

The destruction of so many young lives constituted countless personal tragedies. It dysfunctionalised and institutionalised the inmates of the reformatories and industrial schools, and often impacted negatively and violently on the body politic in a way that filled our criminal courts and our prisons. A survey of 200 prisoners conducted by the Prisoners' Rights Organisation in 1979 for the commission of inquiry into the prison system revealed that some 75% of those surveyed had been inmates of reformatory or industrial schools. The negative impact on Irish society in the 20th century was colossal and this impact remains today.

I wish to put on the record of the House two cases in which I have been involved. A Dublin man who is now in his 60s and is present in the Visitors Gallery spent 12 years in Marlborough House in Glasnevin, Upton in Cork and Daingean in Offaly in the 1950s and 1960s. He escaped from Upton and went to the Garda station in Cork to complain about his treatment, but was promptly transported back to Upton. Eventually, his mother took him bruised and battered to the Department of Education in Marlborough Street. She refused to leave until the Minster for Education came out of his office and met her. The Minister came out eventually and agreed that if the boy went back to Marlborough House for two weeks, he would be released. The boy did go back and every day for those two weeks he was badly beaten for complaining to the Department of Education. His confirmation clothes were taken and his ragged clothes put on him. He was duly released after two weeks.

The second sad case is that of Marion Howe, a baby of 11 months who was entrusted to the care of the nuns in Goldenbridge orphanage in Inchicore in 1955. She entered the convent as a healthy child on 17 May but was dead four days later, having sustained serious visible physical injuries. There were large holes in the bone in both of her knees. The family went to the Garda Síochána but got no satisfaction. In the words of the doctor's report, she had died of acute dysentery. There are so many question marks about this case that I want to support the call by the family that the remains be exhumed so we can find out precisely what happened on that occasion in those sad circumstances.

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