Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I am glad to have several minutes to make a short contribution on this motion. Unfortunately, the limited amount of time allocated to the debate means that many Members who would have liked to make contributions do not have opportunities to do so.

I hope the publication of the Ryan report heralds an honest and sincere response from the State and the religious congregations which were responsible for the gross depravity and savagery inflicted by many of their members on the most vulnerable in our society. I am not sure, however, whether the current debate on this all-party motion is the correct way to deal with the issue. A lot of breast beating is going on, accompanied by talk that I find difficult to stomach. We should have dealt with the issue differently and I would have liked more honesty in the debate.

Regrettably, we continue to await a full acceptance of responsibility on the part of the State. The rewriting of history which Deputy Woods engaged in this morning is not helpful. Time does not allow me to provide the details but I utterly refute many of the Deputy's assertions. The agreement reached with the 18 congregations was grubby in the extreme. It entailed the State stepping in and taking on legal responsibility for clerical abuse not just in the distant past but up to 5 June 2002. Essentially, it was a cheap insurance policy for the perpetrators of criminal abuse and the fact the State was party to that is a disgrace. It flew in the face of modern day thinking on the need for those perpetrators to take responsibility for their actions and it is not until this requirement is satisfied that people can begin to recover. How can the survivors of abuse ever start to move on if the perpetrators of abuse continue to refuse to take responsibility for their actions?

The State, in reaching this deal with the 18 congregations, facilitated that avoidance of responsibility on the part of the congregations. The religious fought tooth and nail to limit their financial liability for this open-ended indemnity provided by the State. They succeeded in including in the deal many properties that had nothing whatsoever to do with redress. They put a €10 million price tag on their counselling services and that is a measure of the hard-nosed approach they took to this. This was not about atonement or seeking forgiveness or facing up to responsibility; this was about striking the toughest bargain they possible could. They had the State and the then Minister, Deputy Michael Woods, over a barrel and God did they strike a tough deal.

Seven years after that deal in the middle of 2009 they have yet to honour it. Incredibly, many of the properties have not yet been transferred and as of December last year less than 50% of those properties had been transferred. I am glad to say the Committee of Public Accounts continues to monitor this issue and we are seeking six-monthly reports from the Department of Education and Science to ensure the congregations live up to their responsibility and to ensure the Department ensures they live up to their responsibility. We will continue to do so until each and every one of those properties is fully transferred. Worst of all, the congregations are still more concerned with saving their own faces than in honest atonement. As recently as two weeks ago, some of those orders were still apologising "if" they caused hurt; in spite of all the money they spend on public relations and all of the spin in which they are engaged, they are still talking about apologising "if" they caused hurt. This country has serious questions to ask itself on the morality and legal liability of continuing to allow our education services and large parts of our health services to be controlled by organisations which have been proven to be systematically and systemically abusive, depraved, criminally violent and which have not yet faced up to that culpability.

We know that down through the years at political and senior official level in some Departments too many people were prepared to turn a blind eye. Worse than that, some senior officials facilitated and were complicit in the abuse. This was not just in the distant past; up to very recent years certain officials with responsibility in this area were moved around by more senior and political figures in those Departments, much in the same way as abusing priests and other religious were moved around by their superiors. Will the Taoiseach undertake to carry out an investigation into the manner in which senior officials in the Department of Education and Science in particular, but also within the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, handled complaints about systemic abuse in our education and health services over the years up to the present? People who are still alive, some of them still in positions where they are paid by the State and others who have recently retired, have serious questions to answer in this regard. If we are serious about dealing with this, the Taoiseach will be determined to get to the root of it and to find out who are those officials responsible for facilitating this abuse. This is not something that happened in the long and distant past; it continued up to very recent years and there is an onus on the Taoiseach to take responsibility to root out that attitude at certain levels in certain departments of the Civil Service. Will the Taoiseach give a commitment to ensure this happens?

I will ask three questions which members of the survivors' groups in the Gallery asked me to pose and they relate to an entirely different aspect of the issue. They are very anxious to find out the answers to them. Who decided to add a gagging clause to the redress board scheme? Who decided to add the threat of imprisonment if people spoke about their experience after having been before the redress board? Was it the former Attorney General, Michael McDowell, who was responsible for adding those two provisions? He is not in a position to make a statement in this House but I call on him to make a public statement on those provisions.

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