Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

The abuse of many thousands of young people in institutions run by the Catholic Church and essentially allowed by State authorities over such a long period is a great cause of shame for this State. We owe a major debt of compensation to people whose lives were utterly ruined. Listening to the tales of the suffering people endured in the industrial schools and Magdalene laundries, it is truly horrifying to think of the abuse suffered by vulnerable young people and their helplessness in the face of the institutions of our society, whether the church or State. Both the church and State professed to protect young people but were involved in horrendous abuse, either through the direct perpetration of abuse or by turning a blind eye to it for a long time.

Many of the victims of abuse are still with us and their lives have been utterly blighted. I meet people every day who endured this horror, including one man who I met randomly on Grafton Street today. Of 14 children in his family, eight had been in industrial schools where their lives were ruined. In that context, for the Oireachtas to impose a guillotine on their right to claim redress from the State and church authorities is a scandal. There should be no question of imposing such a guillotine for as long as there are people who have not had full redress for the crimes that were committed against them. We owe it them to give them every encouragement and opportunity to seek redress at a time of their choosing and not on the basis of some arbitrary date which we impose to bring to an end our responsibility for this issue. The Government must rethink its position in this matter.

It is an absolute scandal that the redress scheme does not extend to the victims of the Magdalene laundries and Bethany home. This amending legislation should provide for their inclusion in the scheme. I appeal to the Government to reconsider its position in this regard.

In the context of the publication of the Cloyne report and the terrible history of powerful institutions in this State being responsible for the most terrible abuse, the Government must exert extreme pressure on the church to open up and be held fully accountable to the victims of abuse in church institutions. The State bears some responsibility for allowing the church to act as it did. The man I met on Grafton Street earlier told me he wants the church authorities, the Papal Nuncio and representatives of the State to be brought before a public forum where it would be open to any victim of abuse in church institutions to come forward and interrogate the representatives of the institutions that were responsible for the abuse and have their stories and histories fully heard. The victims need this type of public forum to put forward their proposals for securing full redress and compensation for the terrible suffering they endured. If the Government is serious about caring for the victims of this terrible abuse, it must take action along the lines I have suggested.

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