Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

Indeed. These issues are not major in terms of general public policy but each one of them is vital to individuals who live with their past every day, people who have had to fight their private demons as well as the public demons of ignorance, prejudice and denial.

I know of one survivor who was abused in an institution. Even though he was only a boy at the time, somehow he found the courage to fight back. He was described as out of control and impossible to manage in the report written about him at the time by the brother in charge. As a result of that report, he was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital.

His experience was not accommodated by the redress board in the way that it would be under the criteria of our Bill. All of the measures do not go beyond this; they simply relate in some way to gaps in the system. They arise because survivors have raised them with us and I have no doubt they have raised them with Government Deputies also. This is what makes the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe's response so disappointing. He complains about our unilateral action in bringing forward this Bill. The Government is at liberty to accept an Opposition Bill at any time and the record shows it does so when it chooses. If this issue has become a divisive one, it is because the Government and the Minister, Deputy O'Keeffe, in particular have chosen to make it so. There is nothing to stop him accepting the Bill and we could work our way through the Committee Stage to improve and tweak it as necessary.

Whatever happens, the issues that we raise will be as valid tomorrow as they are today. They will still require to be dealt with sooner rather than later. This is an opportunity for us, as a Parliament, to do the right thing. Let us take it.

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