Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

When Deputy Higgins spoke on this report in December he said what was important was preventing a scandal rather than addressing the rights of the child. From the reading I have done on the report it seems to have a been a major motivating factor in terms of the people who failed in their obligations. The key issue now is to address the rights of the child. We should have an explicit statement in our constitution. A number of speakers mentioned that in their speeches.

I acknowledge that many progressive steps have been taken over our history on the rights of the child. The 1916 Proclamation spoke about cherishing all the children of the nation equally. The universal children's allowance was introduced in the 1940s. Our education system in general has done well in educating our children over the years. Court cases have often vindicated the rights of the child and have interpreted the Constitution, as it stands, as having rights for the child implicitly within its articles. The Ombudsman for Children was recently established so there has been progress.

On the other hand, there is much in our history which demonstrates that we have treated children as if they were not human beings with the same rights as adults. I was a child in school when corporal punishment was still in place. I experienced it and remember children I knew who were treated very cruelly when corporal punishment was used by people in charge of them in school. Very often it involved people taking out their own problems on vulnerable children, as opposed to chastising the children for anything they had done.

I often wonder why it is acceptable to have primary school children in very derelict buildings but do not have the same standards for buildings for second and third level education. The primary sector, in terms of the school buildings which are in place, is the neglected part of our education system and we need to do something about that.

There is still an element in our society that believes that children should be seen and not heard. What is as dangerous as what was outlined in the Murphy report is that there is still a prevalent view in Irish society that children are the property of their parents. It is time that we took on that view and explicitly stated in our Constitution that children have unique rights and are human beings. We should set out those rights in the Constitution. There is no perfect way to do that but the wording the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children has developed is good. It is progress and I hope the Government makes sure we put that referendum to the people before the end of the year.

On how we respond to the reports, one issue which arises is what we do now in regard to education and its patronage. It is very important that we do not have a knee-jerk reaction. We should not have the idea that there is one model of education, which is very often promoted by a private group, which is somehow purer than another which is promoted by a private group. That was the issue. The church was a private institution that was funded, in terms of education, by the State. The proper accountability and transparency was not in place in the provision of that education.

I acknowledge that a lot of the good came from that educational model. My child attends a very good Catholic school which is as multi-denominational as any other. It caters for many different nationalities and children of many different religions. It is a very progressive school, which is the case for most Catholic schools in the country. We need consultation on what the best model is for education.

The State should provide a national system of education to ensure that every child has the right to education. There should be democratic accountability in terms of how education is provided. When that process is being carried out, we need to involve all of the stakeholders, including the church and those involved in Catholic schools.

The point was made that Catholic schools discriminate against children in their enrolment policies. Other models of schools also discriminate against children. Paul Rowe, chief executive officer of Educate Together, has published a letter in a newspaper today which states it would have a first come, first served enrolment policy in a school in Lucan. The current first come, first served policies can be as discriminatory to children as other enrolment models and that must be recognised.

As we discuss the Ryan and Murphy reports and how we redress the suffering of the victims and so on, it is important that we do not continue to make mistakes in how we vindicate children's rights. Every day we read newspaper reports of court cases relating to the abuse of children or to children in inappropriate exploitative relationships with adults but the Government still has done nothing about the flawed legislation passed in 2006 in response to the Supreme Court judgment that found the 1935 Act unconstitutional. The Government still has not legislated to strengthen our laws to protect young people against predatory adults. It also has not introduced amending legislation to the Child Care Act, flaws in which were also identified by the children's committee to which I referred earlier. It is our role to legislate. There will be huge publicity about the wildlife and dog breeding legislation, yet, four years on, nothing has not been done about a key legislative issue, which is the protection of children's rights.

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