Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I thank all those who contributed to the debate, which was initiated by the Labour Party and Sinn Féin, and pay tribute to all those who contributed to the work of the joint committee which achieved a consensus.

As we finish this debate, I note how difficult it is to establish any rights base in this country for any purpose. One would like to think that it would be a basic aspect of citizenship that there would be a floor of rights which would affect and protect all people. We are very far from that and I interpret the Minister of State's speech, which spoke of consultation, bureaucracy and the Attorney General, as an invitation to engage with an almost intractable force which is against rights. The history of rights in this country is a poor one.

One need only take the transition from the democratic programme of the First Dáil to the 1937 Constitution, and what one sees is the slipping away of any commitment to rights. I noted in the discussions which took place in the committee the hostility to changing Article 41 is based on the fact that children's rights are not accepted in the fullest sense and, rather, are contextualised It does not surprise me because as a very young Senator I moved one of the earliest attempts to abolish the status of illegitimacy. It was very clear at that stage in the Irish psyche - we were not a republic by any stretch of the imagination - that property and other institutions came first. I reflected long and hard, and I do so again today, on how long it took us in this republic to stop beating children, sending them to adult jails and sending children with mental difficulties to adult psychiatric wards where, in effect, they are incarcerated rather than treated. That is the legacy and urgency, and people want people to respond to these issues and be able to say that, in a place which calls itself a republic, every child will be protected.

Some of the decisions made by post-dictatorship societies are very interesting. I visited Nicaragua with the father of the Minister of State. One of its first actions was to publish a chapter on the rights of the child, Para los Niños, which was influenced by Ernesto Cardinal, among others, and received a reward from UNESCO. It recognised the rights of the child as a person. There are immense complexities about whether one is talking about personal rights, individual rights, collective rights or whatever, but it is possible, even for developing countries, to establish constitutional protection for children as children.

I was on the MacBride commission and remember the tears of a senior official of the then Department of Education who told me he could look at the faces of children from troubled families and know from their school attendance records that they would be the people who would go on to prison. Despite this, at that time the then Department of Education did not speak to the then Department of Justice. Thus, there was an incredible grinding bureaucracy. These are the Departments which have reports that said everything was fine in Daingean and these are people who lost the minutes taken by junior civil servants who saw a child being stripped naked and beaten on the landing there. That is the record. It is simply not convincing for anyone to say after two years and eight months, after the Government being represented at every stage and after it being open to every civil servant to know what the proceedings and the arguments were in a committee which, to its credit, achieved consensus that one must start all over again and consult with every Department and the Attorney General with their despicable records in regard to the protection of the child.

I refer to all these sanctimonious statements from all these people who have been elected from all around the country and who have discovered how complex things are. They are not that complex if one wants to do something. There is a consensus available which, I believe, is a very conservative one. I would have gone much further in regard to Article 41 because I do not believe that in the international definition of rights, one has any right to suggest that a child should be locked into a dysfunctional family and that the child's rights are residual to establishing, somehow or another, that one must be beaten before one is free to enjoy one's personal rights. People gave way on many different aspects of this proposal. What we have now is something which will be voted on but it has been said we are not ready. No one suggested that the Government act in some impetuous way.

This is a very serious situation. There was an opportunity for two and a half years, since 2007, to address these issues. Going back to 1992 and 1993, before ratification, one could have anticipated a great deal of these issues. In between, we have had a series of reports which simply show that children have been scandalously treated.

Over the decades the failure to protect children has had horrific consequences. Some of the most vulnerable have found themselves in institutions, frequently followed by prison. One must ask what is the basis of that vulnerability. Why did children not have access to protection? What happened between the democratic programme of the first Dáil and the 1937 Constitution? Mediating blockages were put in between. It was suggested that a child would first have to show he or she was being neglected in the family, that the institution abused the child and so forth. Why not have a child's rights as a person based on personal dignity and on his or her essence as a human being? That was the challenge facing us in the Republic but it was a slided away from.

There was an authoritarian ethos that kept saying it was right to slap children. It was only in 1982 that corporal punished was stopped. That is a stain on the history of this Republic. I am not making just a partisan point. People said times were different but they were not different. It was an abuse by the strong of the weak.

As I speak, the absence of provisions available to lonely children in institutions, to children sitting on kerbs and to children who should be entitled to medical facilities is scandalous. A monster called the HSE is not able to say it can count the number of children for which it has responsibility. That is a scandal in any country not to speak of one which calls itself a republic.

I have spoken to children in my advice centres. They go into prison illiterate and come out not only illiterate but dependent on drugs. All of the time we have reviews, commissions and so forth reporting.

What must be decided? The children of the people who will be consulted in all the Departments are not at risk. If one wants to say every child is a protected child in this Republic, then one will vote for the motion. That is what we should do. We do not need any more time.

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