Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Bill which deals with people who were ignored for decades by the State and were repeatedly failed. They deserve what the Bill gives them and the protection it offers them. This small country of ours has been plagued by many scandals over the years but none has been bigger than the horrifying institutional abuse from which so many of our citizens have suffered.

The numbers of people attending this week's Eucharistic Congress compared with the one in the 1930s reflect the hurt many people feel following a series of damning reports. Not only has the continued institutional abuse destroyed many people's faith, but it has also destroyed lives. The church and State were complicit in this, side by side with each other. In recent years the people have repeatedly learned of the pure horror of what these people have gone through. We hear the stories, read about them, try to imagine what people went through, are sickened about what happened to them and then we forget and try to move on with our lives. It is not so simple for the victims and their families. They cannot forget and have to live with what happened to them which is why the services provided in this fund are so vital.

While I welcome the legislation, I cannot help feeling that the State continues to ignore some victims of institutional abuse as is happening in this legislation. The fund only applies to those who received compensation from the residential institutions redress fund. This only incorporates the victims of 139 different institutions. While it is easy to think that everyone who was institutionally abused is covered in those 139 institutions - owing to the vastness of that number - a significant number of additional institutions are not covered by the legislation. For example, those from the Magdalene laundries, among others, are not entitled to anything from this new fund. The Minister has said he may review who is eligible for the fund. Do we really need another review? We know who needs to be included and we know who should already be included. A painstaking review that will take months to be published and then delayed, as with most other reviews this Government has carried out, is not the approach to take on the issue of eligibility. We do not need a review for everything we do in this House given that they waste time, cost money and in the majority of cases give the expected result. All victims must be included and there is no viable argument to suggest otherwise.

The Minster has basically said that we cannot afford to open the fund to all victims of institutional abuse because the fund of €110 million would be depleted by the amount of applications, which is a sorry state of affairs and a shocking insight into Irish history. We must work to ensure all victims of institutional abuse have the services and funds they deserve available to them. We cannot fail these people again.

In addition, while I welcome that religious congregations are completely funding this new fund, along with many of my colleagues in opposition and government, I am concerned that the fund has only received €20 million of the amount due to it. The congregations have claimed they are waiting for this legislation to pass before they make their agreed payments. We all know this legislation will pass and while it is not perfect and needs to be worked on during the legislative process, why are the congregations holding on to their funds? Why have they not already paid so the services that are made available to the survivors in this legislation can be made available as soon as possible?

These people have been waiting for the services provided for in this legislation since the 2009 Ryan report and it is now 2012. They waited long enough for an apology and they waited long enough for compensation - we cannot make them wait any longer for the support that is rightfully theirs. The Government must ensure that the funding is in place as soon as the legislation is passed. It cannot be denied that the bureaucracy and red tape involved in this legislation only add to the pain of survivors. Many survivor groups have called for a simple, quick service that can serve them in the best way possible. The services that will be provided to survivors as a result by this Bill are necessary and appropriate, but the way they must be vetted and approved before the people can avail of them may cause some delay. Nobody can deny that approving the service will take a significant amount of time and in many cases victims might not have this time. Many are already struggling.

This is one of the reasons for the distrust between survivor groups and the State. Some feel the State should not be involved in this fund and that the groups should be given the funds directly so they can do what they believe is best for the survivors. Who can argue, indeed, that the survivors do not know best what is appropriate for them? The only way the State can prove to survivors that it is capable is by ensuring that a quick, appropriate service is provided. It is the least we can do for those who need it. The residential institutions redress fund cost €100 million more than was originally envisaged, nearly the entire cost of this new fund. That was attributed to a surge of late applications, third-party legal bills and expenses. All of this added more time to the process of distributing funds. In fact, some of these applications are still being processed. Furthermore, all donations of property must be approved by the Commissioners of Charitable Donations and Bequests. Again, this will take a considerable amount of time and place further time pressures on how the Government gets the €110 million required for the residential institutions statutory fund being established by this Bill.

My party is also concerned that family members cannot avail of this fund. Family members of victims are also victims. They have had to deal in many instances with their father or mother being emotionally distressed, depressed and mentally affected as a result of the failure of church and State to protect them. The Education Finance Board, which will be dissolved as a result of this Bill, made provisions to provide educational opportunities for victims and their family members. That is not the case with this new fund. Only former residents can avail of educational opportunities. We must work to ensure that the families of victims are also catered for by the State as they are also victims of our repeated failures. The Minister has said that education is very important for the survivors' families and that use of the fund for that purpose would be appropriate. Why is there no allocation of the fund towards victims' families? We must provide some assistance for the families as well as the victims.

We are also concerned about funding for survivor groups. Until now, survivor groups were funded by the Government, but that will no longer be the case after this legislation is passed. Without these groups, we would not be in the situation we are in today. We would probably not be discussing this legislation. In 1999, we would not have had the heinously overdue apology from the State. These groups have done more for survivors than we ever have and it would be wrong to stop supporting them.

Another aspect of this is the fact that the outreach services in the UK will no longer be funded by the Government. My party is particularly concerned about this. Our links with Britain are closer than with any other country. In every recession we have experienced, the UK has offered an escape route, somewhere the Irish could get work which their own country could not provide. However, for many, the UK was a much more serious escape route. Many victims left their hellish experience of the Irish State behind them to start a new life in Britain, never to return. Many were unsuccessful as the scale of abuse they suffered could not be altered, even though their country of residence had changed. For this reason, four outreach services were set up in the UK to help the people who left this country as a result of their experience of abuse in early life.

This legislation will mean those four outreach services will no longer be funded by the Government. I am concerned that the forgotten victims of the Irish State will be forgotten once more after these services close. How can the Government ensure that they will be able to contact these people and how will it ensure they know of the services that are available to them?

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