Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

We were well warned about the impact of the Murphy report. Archbishop Martin had carefully prepared the ground for its publication over a prolonged period. Public opinion had also absorbed the Ryan report and the horrors that it laid bare about our treatment and supervision of many thousands of children over many decades in residential institutions managed by religious orders. The Murphy commission was not concerned with whether abuse occurred, but with the institutional response to complaints, suspicions and knowledge of child sexual abuse. Nonetheless the Murphy commission found that "child sexual abuse by clerics was widespread throughout the period under review."

Notwithstanding the preparatory work done to prepare the public, including the Catholic laity, the contents of the commission's report have stunned the Irish people. The awful uncomfortable reality of child sexual abuse is bad enough; the record of collusion, cover-up and dereliction of duty by church and State authorities is beyond belief. These are not acts of omission because of over-work, forgetfulness, lack of knowledge or even neglect; the cover-up was deliberate, calculated and proactive. In the words of the commission:

The Dublin Archdiocese's preoccupation in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.

In fact, it sought to subvert the law of the State. In some instances, senior gardaí seem to have fallen over themselves to facilitate that subversion.

Given that we are discussing the protection of children, this would be a crime of the most serious character against any institution in society. That such a conclusion can be dispassionately arrived at by a judicial commission against the management of one of the largest archdioceses of the Catholic church has shocked people. Church authorities have repeatedly claimed to have been on a learning curve prior to the late 1990s in terms of dealing with child sexual abuse. The commission makes plain that "it does not accept the truth of such claims and assertions". Despite 2,000 years of papal statements on clerical child sexual abuse, the Vatican has made no statement on the Murphy report. Worse, and notwithstanding the diplomatic niceties dwelt on by the Taoiseach on Tuesday, the Vatican authorities did not assist the Murphy commission. Right up the report, the Catholic church's leaders in Ireland feigned a lack of appreciation of the abuse phenomenon. Yet in the mid-1980s, they were sufficiently aware to set about the taking out of insurance to protect the archdiocese. The commission records this as being inconsistent with the view that they were still on a learning curve.

All the archbishops of Dublin in the period covered by the commission were aware of some complaints. Many of the auxiliary bishops also knew of the fact of abuse, as did named officials. Religious orders were also aware. The report records this in some detail. According to it:

Most officials in the Archdiocese were, however, greatly exercised by the provisions of canon law which deal with secrecy. It was often spoken of as a reason for not informing the Gardaí about known criminal offences.

Referring to the experience in the archdiocese of Boston, the commission states: "In the case of that Diocese, as in the case of Dublin, secrecy protected the institution at the expense of children". As legislators, all we need to know about canon law is that its precepts may be used in the eyes of churchmen as a licence to protect the church at the expense of children.

Another consequence of what the commission calls "the obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal" was the failure of successive archbishops and bishops to report complaints to the Garda prior to 1996. When the dictates of obsessive concern with secrecy were inadequate, it has emerged that there is a special dispensation for bishops to lie. The revelation by Cardinal Connell of the device known as mental reservation confounds anything experienced in the political world. Occasionally, Ministers evade, dodge, weave and mislead and Deputies exaggerate, but the word "lie" is not admissible in the Chamber. If a blatant untruth finds itself on the record inadvertently or otherwise, the requirement is to put the record straight as quickly as may be. However, leading churchmen can apparently, if the need arises, shelter behind mental reservation. Given Cardinal Connell's Drumcondra provenance when explaining the concept, we in the House should consider ourselves fortunate that mental reservation did not seep into the political water in Drumcondra.

We know that clerical sexual abuse in the archdiocese of Dublin was widespread. We know that "the vast majority (of priests) simply chose to turn a blind eye". We know that all of the archbishops since and including McQuaid contrived to cover up. We know that the auxiliary bishops of the same period were, to varying degrees, similarly culpable. We know that not one of the archbishops "reported his knowledge of child sexual abuse to the Gardaí throughout the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s". We also know that, when in 1995 Cardinal Connell eventually allowed the names of 17 priests to be given to the Garda, it was incomplete because at that time "there was knowledge of at least 28 priests against whom there had been complaints". We know that, in the mid-1980s, Archbishop McNamara arranged to have insurance taken out. We know that Bishop Kavanagh tried to influence the Garda handling of criminal complaints against a particular priest. He persuaded a particular family to drop a complaint made to the Garda. We know that Bishop Murray "dealt badly with a number of complaints". We know that there is "one clear case of a false accusation of child sexual abuse against a priest", an unimaginable horror for the man and his family.

The Murphy commission concluded that "every bishop's primary loyalty is to the church itself". The welfare of children either did not feature at all, as in the case of Archbishop McQuaid, or was a secondary concern. Apart from the routine dereliction of duty and moral authority, the failure to take action meant that countless children were abused who could have been protected. As public representatives, many Deputies believe that many suicides are due to the experience of victims at the hands of clerics who were left free to abuse again and again.

Notwithstanding their suffering and the damage inflicted in their early lives, many of the remarkable survivors hailed the publication of the Murphy report and anxiously awaited the response of the church. Has anything changed? The final paragraph of the report reads as follows:

Mrs Collins told the Commission that she no longer trusts her Church. After years spent trying to get her Church to deal openly and truthfully with the challenge posed to it by the scandal of child sexual abuse she has concluded that within the institutional Church there has been no change of heart, only a change of strategy. Is she right? Time will tell.

The Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, referred to this paragraph. Since publication, what time has told is that, within the institutional church, little has changed. Marie Collins said as much on Tuesday when she outlined her bitter disappointment with the response of the bishops, some of whom have not even bothered to read the report. The media seems to dictate the changing episcopal response. The bishops seem to be measuring what they can get away with. They seem to misunderstand the earthquake they have set off in society. The Vatican is silent. The Papal Nuncio is contemptuous. Whatever happens, this is the end of the age of deference. We owe a great debt to Judge Yvonne Murphy and her fellow commissioners.

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