Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I listened last night with great disappointment to the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, rejecting, almost out of hand, the Labour Party's modest reform proposals set out in the Institutional Child Abuse Bill 2009 but I welcome the much more accommodating tone of the Minister of State, Deputy Andrews, here this evening. Perhaps overnight there has been some change of heart on the part of Fianna Fáil.

As the Minister, Deputy O'Keeffe, spoke, one could almost feel hovering the ghosts of generations of Irish Ministers for Education and I thought of Tomas Derrig, De Valera's Minister for Education for most of the 1930s and 1940s, who, although a teacher, seemed to lack not just understanding but compassion for the child prison system the Irish State permitted the religious orders to run. I agree with Bruce Arnold's description that our child prison system was for many the equivalent of the Gulags.

The Labour Party proposals seek to address several issues arising from the Ryan report which are important to the children who were incarcerated in the system. The Labour Party Bill proposes measures that would, first, remove the gagging clause from the Redress Act and so restore freedom of speech to people who gave evidence to the redress process and-or were the recipients of awards; second, seek to replace the definition in the Redress Act of 2002 of a child under the age of 18 to the law at the time which deemed the age of majority to be 21; third, widen the definition of an institution to include a number of new institutions such as certain children's homes or other institutions in which children were placed and were not covered by the commission Act or the redress Act. It must be borne in mind that covers many young, under age women who were in Magdalene homes; and fourth, ensure that the records of the commission and the bodies associated with it are preserved as important state records for personal, archival and historical research purposes.

In the torrent of debate and discussion that has followed in this House, and in the wider public debate, there has been almost universal and, I thought, cross-party agreement on these matters. I cannot understand what it is in the Fianna Fáil gene, in the Taoiseach, Deputy Brian Cowen, and in the Minister, Deputy O'Keeffe, that they cannot accept these proposals put forward by the Labour Party in the spirit in which they are intended.

The Minister's speech last night chose not to address these sections of the Bill. These measures would bring great comfort and vindication not just to the people who were in institutions but to their families, their children and grandchildren. I cannot understand why the Minister would have any problem with preserving essential historical records or in restoring and confirming the free speech of former residents.

The Minister's opposition to the Labour Party Bill seemed partly based in pique that the Labour Party would dare to seek further legal remedies following the publication of the Ryan report. We made it very clear in our comments on the Ryan report that we thought there were wrongs that should be righted and as the Government has not moved to do so rapidly, we felt it was our responsibility to bring forward this Bill.

On those areas of the Labour Party Bill that the Minister addressed, he suggests that some of them require further legal consideration and he is also critical of the fact that our proposals are not fully costed. I put it to the Minister that most of the measures in the Labour Party Bill have limited, if any, costs. In respect of further restitution by the religious orders, clearly the religious orders and the Government are involved in a process of negotiation to reach an agreed sum which will be acceptable to the victims' organisations and the survivors. Because these discussions are private to the Government, the religious congregations and the representatives of the people who were in institutions, we have consciously not intervened in that part of the process. Therefore, the Bill does not mention that part of the process. However, we believe the process needs to be widened to ensure that institutions which ought to have been included are, and we have also sought the extension of the time limit for applications for redress. We have done so, conscious of the fact that people who left for England and stayed there may have been unaware of the process until it was too late to apply, while others in Ireland and abroad may have been too traumatised until now to make an application.

There is also the continuing issue of the committal proceedings and the stain of conviction which many people believe attached to their incarceration and detention in institutions. The Government's suggestion that people who are concerned about their records, arising from their committal or conviction, should write to the Minister or the Department of the Justice, Equality and Law Reform and that they would be dealt with, as though they were clinic cases, is insulting. No less a person that Mr. Gerard Hogan SC, who examined detention orders in respect of children, described the orders as "patently illegal". These are the detention and committal orders which resulted in children being committed to institutions for significant numbers of years.

The tomb of Jonathan Swift in St. Patrick's Cathedral bears the inscription saying that he lies at rest "where savage indignation can no longer lacerate his heart". The measures in the Labour Party Bill seek to offer some additional solace to people who have suffered much. I again plead with the Government, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party to accept these modest measures as a further and important legal step in vindicating the children who were incarcerated, starved and beaten, did forced labour, were sexually abused and raped and some of whom died. Sorry is not enough.

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