Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

Whatever about the previous debate, this is not a debate in which party division or rancour should inform our discourse because this is something for which we all bear some responsibility and for which we all have an obligation to the survivors and the victims and to their children. I cannot recall anything in recent times that had such an impact as the findings of the Ryan commission. It shocked a nation that thought it had got beyond being shocked.

The 43 conclusions in the executive summary are, frankly, quite unreal and horrific when one reads them in the cold light of day, but to hear the anguished voices of those people who are the subjects of the testimony that they gave and to listen to their stories makes us all ashamed. Therefore, it puts upon all of us an obligation to listen to, reach out and, where possible, respond to many of the concerns they expressed to us in the light of the findings of the report, its 43 conclusions, and the 21 recommendations it made at the end of five volumes of testimony and analysis.

The Labour Party has studied the Ryan report and its recommendations. We have listened to the survivors, and to the children of those who were sent to these institutions and who are no longer alive. There were some issues which were outside the scope of the original legislation, the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002, which now need to be addressed. It is for this reason that we have published our Bill, the Institutional Child Abuse Bill 2009, to make amends to the victims of abuse.

I welcome the Minister for Education and Science to the House. We earnestly hope the Bill will not be opposed by Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. We do not wish to divide the House on this issue. There are many ways in which the Bill can be taken on board. We all know the fate of Private Members' Bills that are accepted on Second Stage; some of them surface in due course amended by the Government of the day and are enacted, others have to linger but at least they have the credibility of not being voted down. I know the vote will not take place until tomorrow evening but I understand that it is the intention of the Government as of now to vote it down. In the spirit of comradeship I earnestly ask the Minister to think again about that course of action. We owe it to ourselves and the victims throughout the country, some of whom are in the Gallery.

With regard to what the Bill proposes to do, we have identified seven areas in which we believe action is necessary. The first is that the Bill would expand the definitions of "child" and "institution" so that no victim of abuse is denied justice through the redress board. A small but substantial number of people were previously excluded from the redress board because of the wording of the 2002 Act. This change would ensure that this would no longer be the case.

The second is that the Bill would expand the definitions of "child" and "institution" which would necessitate a new time period for new applications to the redress board. It would change the definition of adult from the age of 21 to the age of 18. People were deemed to be children during the time they were incarcerated in these institutions because they were under the age of 21 but because we moved the voting age and other definitions of childhood and adulthood they were no longer retrospectively deemed to be children even though at that point in time they were so deemed. That is an anomaly that needs to be addressed and our Bill addresses it.

The third is that the Bill would abolish the obligation of secrecy which effectively prohibits applicants to the redress board from talking about their childhood and time in the institutions. My God, what type of a country does the Government think we live in that one cannot talk about one's childhood or one's experience in institutions? That is straight out of Tiananmen Square in the People's Republic of China or Russia or another dictatorial state. That citizens of this republic are prohibited by law from talking about their childhood or their time in Irish institutions has no place in Irish legislation and it should be reformed.

The fourth is that the Bill proposes that persons who were detained in reformatory schools under criminal convictions must be treated for all purposes in law as not guilty of an offence and their records will be wiped clean. This is important for a variety of reasons and it is important that we understand what we are trying to do. We cannot, nor will we try to, rewrite history; the conclusions and records of the courts must stand for future generations to see what shame we brought upon ourselves in the name of the Irish republic. The Labour Party does not propose to retrospectively correct the historical record but we are stating that we would amend the impact of that historical record to the point that as and from the enactment of the Bill, no person so charged, so recorded, so convicted and so dispersed from a court to an institution would be deemed then or now to have been a criminal irrespective of what the historical record said. That is what we seek; it is a cultural change and not a factual change. It is a just change and we should do it without altering the historical record and that record is itself important.

I have not read all five volumes because, quite frankly, I do not know whether I have the courage or the capacity to do so, but the bits I have read are such that no matter how horrific they are, the last thing that should ever happen to them is that they be destroyed. The last thing that should ever occur to them is that they disappear as some files have disappeared in the Department of Education and Science. The last thing that this republic should ever be able to say is that not only did we abuse those victims but that we buried their past as well. Every record, testimony and word of anguish that carefully and painfully described the system that was constructed should in whatever way at least be preserved; let it be for other people and other generations to decide how best to convey them. No survivor or child of a survivor should be able to say that there is no record of what they said or experienced. It would be like having a relative with no grave or like having somebody among the disappeared because the Minister would allow the records of their testimony to be destroyed. It is the Minister who has that power and we want it to be shared with the House to ensure that no such destruction can take place unless the House agrees to it and I do not think it would. That is the fifth proposal.

The sixth proposal made by the Bill is to open up the 2002 indemnity deal to freedom of information requests. All legal privilege and confidentiality would be waived by the State if the Bill is passed. This was part of the sordid deal between contracting parties as it passed from Ms Justice Laffoy to Mr. Justice Ryan. It was a shoddy deal and it should be removed. If it is removed it would allow the records of the 2002 indemnity agreement with the 18 religious teaching orders to be published in full. The culture of deferment in the Department of Education and Science to which the third conclusion of the executive summary refers is a thing of the past. It is healthy that it should be buried in the past because it will not inform any citizen of the republic in the future of the State as we march into this century. It would guarantee that any proposed amendment to the indemnity deal would have to be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas and subject to their approval.

The seventh key proposal of the legislation will enable an audit of the assets of the religious orders. The Bill confers power on the Government to appoint an auditor to examine the financial affairs of the 18 religious orders who signed the 2002 indemnity agreement. This will allow the Government to assess the true wealth of the religious orders for future renegotiation of the 2002 agreement. It was, perhaps, my colleague, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, who, on behalf of the Labour Party and the citizens of this Republic, pioneered the questioning on the shoddy deal done in secret by former Minister, Deputy Michael Woods, and the then Secretary General of the Department of Education and Science, now since retired. I presume I can refer to him by name - Mr. Dennehy. If we can refer by name to T.K. Whitaker, we can refer to others.

That was a shoddy deal. While it was not easy to calculate what the approximate cost might be, the Department of Finance suggested the burden should be shared evenly, 50:50. However, we got a deal that allocated 10% of the burden to the religious orders and 90% to the taxpayer. That deal must be reopened. I understand the Taoiseach and the Minister for Education and Science met with the representatives of the 18 religious orders after the debate on the Ryan report some weeks ago and that a request has been made to reopen the deal. I hope the Minister will address that matter in his response to this debate and confirm to the House my understanding, as reported in the media, that the Taoiseach requested an audit to be undertaken by the religious congregations so as to see what contribution they can make from their own resources.

I wish to say something in this regard. I am the product of the religious teaching orders. I am a proud graduate of the wonderful education I got from the Holy Ghost Fathers in St. Michael's School and Blackrock College. I have never resiled from that. To my dying days, I will be eternally grateful for the love, affection, erudition, leadership and education I got from those men. Neither I nor the Labour Party have any desire to impoverish the religious teaching orders. God knows, they are now at a stage in their lives, having made an incredible contribution to this country, where their major concern is the care of the elderly in their communities. They do not have children or grandchildren who can provide for their nursing home care and do not have the support we have in old age or that we give to our parents in old age. However, they are entitled to it.

In so far as they need resources for decent dignity in their declining years - such as we would want for our own parents, uncles and aunts - they should have them, but let them have them at the expense of the taxpayer and not through the sale and dispersal of the educational infrastructure and other institutions and buildings they have across the country. Let not the so-called financial and legal advisers advise them to dispose of their assets so that they can care for the sick and elderly in their communities to whom they have an obligation. Let that not be the outcome. If there are spare resources, let them come into the pot towards the 50:50 deal, but if there are not such resources - I am open on the question, but I suspect there are not - let us not allow the sale of infrastructure paid for by taxpayers and Catholic citizens, in the main, who contributed voluntarily to the construction of these edifices over the past 100 years or so. That is not what the Labour Party is about nor is it what I am about. This is public infrastructure that belongs to the community and should not be allowed disappear.

The reason I am so passionate about this - the Minister has heard me say this before - is that two secondary schools in the constituency of Dublin South-East under the control of religious teaching orders disappeared without any reference to the parents or anyone involved. There was minimal notice to the teachers and no forward planning for the parents of those children. One primary school under religious order control and two primary schools under diocesan control have also disappeared. They closed these schools for their own reasons. We understand the reasons, but such reasons are no longer sufficient when we have 500,000 primary school children in our system and another 100,000 expected within ten years. We cannot allow such infrastructure to disappear and that is the reason I have been so strong on this argument.

I want to repeat that I am the product of a fine education from those religious teaching orders. I salute them and am thankful for my education. This Bill is not about some kind of vindictive chase of the religious orders to try to impoverish them, but about enriching our community and celebrating the contribution the majority of them have made to our society.

Some issues have been brought to our attention, including the experience of women who were in the Magdalene laundries. The Bill does not address that issue and some of my colleagues will explain the technical and legal reasons for that later. That is not to say their experience was not horrendous. Theirs is a past that should not be buried, but there are reasons and explanations that time prevents me from elaborating upon as to why the Bill does not include them. It was not just the State and religious teaching orders who were involved. There was a culture in some of our families, from wherever it originated, that denied the existence of daughters who became pregnant outside of marriage. They were hunted out of their homes and, in some cases, out of the country. I am ashamed of that. We should all be ashamed of it. We have addressed it now, but that did not happen for some people born here and they suffered a great hurt as a result. We all know that. I do not know if legislation along the lines of the redress board legislation can deal with that. Nevertheless, we should recognise it did happen.

One of the first recommendations in the executive summary of the Ryan report was there should be a monument. That does not go far enough. There should be a museum. We should have a museum that will contain the records, the history, the experience, the voices and the sounds of the victims so that they can explain why, having lost their childhoods, they could never behave and live as full adults towards their own children. We should have a museum so that grandchildren can understand why their grandmother or grandfather were not as others were or why they had black days that were inexplicable to a young child. We need that permanent memory from the past to be kept in such a museum so that we never allow this abuse occur again, because forgetfulness is the enemy of such a surety for the future.

I have a suggestion for the House. As part of their contribution to the 10% contribution to the State, the Christian Brothers handed over the property of Coláiste Mhuire in Parnell Square. That property is currently under the management of the OPW, but no use has been found for it. The property is beside the Hugh Lane Gallery and across from the Garden of Remembrance - part of the cultural sector of Dublin City. There, between the splendour of the art collection of the Hugh Lane Gallery and the inspirational heroism and martyrdom of the 1916 insurrection, we should have a museum for ourselves about ourselves so that our future children will realise this was not some foreign invasion, these were not the Vikings nor some Anglo-Saxon invasion nor Cromwell, but us, you, me and every citizen in the country, who allowed these things to happen in our name and in our State. Never again must this be allowed to happen.

I would accept the proposal of a monument, but suggest it should be a museum. We should locate that museum not somewhere down the country where it would be difficult to access, like Letterfrack or Daingean, but in the centre of our capital city, within 500 m of that icon of insurrection, the GPO, to say that, yes, we did some glorious things in this Republic, but we also did things of which we should be ashamed and which we must ensure will never occur again.

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