Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I refer to the demonstration held outside this building some three weeks ago. I am unsure if anyone else felt the same as I did, but the most poignant and heart wrenching moment for me was when the names of the different institutions and homes were called out. When Goldenbridge was called out three women in front of me said "Here", when Letterfrack was called out, four men said "Here" and so on for many different institutions including Good Shepherd Convent, Cork. The lone voices in that crowd recognised for the first time that they were not alone. When these children were released or escaped from these institutions, or ran between life and death, and got out of this country in most cases, they must have thought that they were entirely alone and that they were the only people who had been in these institutions. I think it must give them some small comfort to know they were not alone. It was the saddest thing to see little groups within that big, huge mass of people, acknowledge where they spent their childhood.

I wrote a letter to the then Minister for Education and Science in November 2003. For about a year before that, I had gone to England one Saturday every month to meet a group of people at their invitation, at the Lazy Daisy café in Notting Hill, an area that became famous for something entirely different later. Every time I went there were often different groups but in the main, about 20 men and women were there ranging in age from their late 40s to their late 60s. The most striking thing about them was the sense of anger and frustration. They had escaped to a great extent - I am still fascinated as to how teenagers of 16 or 17 got through that whole maze of getting to England, getting past the pimps at railway stations and managing to survive and go on to have productive lives. I think that is a story in itself. I wonder how people with no experience of the outside world, only experience of abuse, managed to survive all that.

They felt deeply they had less right to complain because they had left Ireland. At the time the Minister was going to London and speaking to groups. It was estimated that 40% of all those detained in institutions in Ireland escaped to England and the general feeling was that the five outreach workers paid for by the Irish Government were doing a good job but there were not enough of them to cover the entirety of England, Scotland and Wales. The reason the majority of them did not come forward and still have not come forward and are now late in their applications, was the lack of education they got while they were supposed to have been in school. Therefore, even if they saw advertisements they did not have the wherewithal to make the application.

I am reading details from the letter. They also felt very strongly at the time that the funding put in place by this Government for counselling services in England was given to people who were nuns or clerics and these people did not want to go to them for counselling. They felt they should have had the right to choose their own counsellors. They asked me to ask the Minister for certain things such as an extension of the freephone service to the UK as at the time it was only available in Ireland; the right to choose a therapist or a counsellor; facilities such as a fax and computer; help with the phone; a speedier response to queries; comprehensive media campaign and regular updates in the form of a newsletter. Those seven requests had not been met since requested in 2003.

I finished the letter to the Minister by writing that these meetings were quite an emotional experience and I ended the letter with the words of one lady named Mary: "I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday. I never knew how old I was. How can they give me that back?" That woman has stayed with me all these years and I have visited several times. People talk about cherishing all children equally. This Labour Party Bill is about doing now in part what we should have done all those years ago. It is about extending the time limit, removing the gagging order. I would say to anyone listening to me: "Speak out because they cannot put you all in jail. You have at long last found your voice. Tell your story. What are they going to do to you? They have taken your childhood, they have taken your innocence, they have taken your ability to be happy, what else can they do to you? Like Mary, how can they give you that back? They cannot."

We need to start being very serious about this and forget the platitudes. Every time I think of those people, I look at my grandsons who are now six years old. I think about how I would feel if someone took them away and did those awful things to them. This Bill, as progressive and as expansive as it is, still does not go far enough. We still have the Magdalen laundries women and we need to deal with that because they may have been put in there by their parents or the parish priest or the local sergeant or by the other institution which we have not dealt with, the ISPCC, who were complicit in the treatment of these children. Why are we not dealing with those? Why are we not dealing with the parents who are still alive whose children were stolen from them and who did not, as it is deemed in law, have the comfort of their children in their old age? Some of those people are still alive. Why are we not allowing these people to say loud and clear what they need to say to us? Why are gagging orders needed - to pretend it never happened, to pretend that these awful places did not exist? Well, they did exist. These were not just anyone's children; they were the children of the poor because it was only the poor who could not complain and who did not have the wherewithal to fight it in court.

If we do nothing else, then above all else, we have to now start to be open and above board about this and give these people a voice. We can talk in here in this House; the church can speak; the Ministers can speak but it is the children who need to speak and they need to be listened to. The institutions that are now in talks with the Government should hang their heads in shame. What are they talking about? They know what happened; the Ryan report makes that very clear. They were as responsible as the State. They have the property, despite the downturn in the property market it is still a valuable asset. What are they talking about now? Are they still trying to cut a deal? There should be no deal. This is not about impoverishing religious institutions; it is about making them stand up and be accountable for what they did.

I will conclude with the words spoken by Mary. "I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday. I never knew how old I was. How can they give me that back?" We may not be able to give her that back but we can give her dignity, we can give her respect and we can give her a voice.

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