Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for his opening remarks on the Bill. I also thank him for allowing for a discussion at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality on the Heads of the Bill, which was an informative process attended by various interested groups. I believe this part of the debate will be far more informed as a result of that process. I acknowledge the changes made by the Minister to the heads of the Bill based on that discussion and take this opportunity to compliment the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, Deputy David Stanton and committee secretariat, who facilitated the attendance of the various groups at those hearings. This process has been repeated on a number of occasions in relation to other pieces of legislation. I acknowledge the Minister's role in ensuring that happened.

It is almost a year since the Cloyne report was published. Also, the report by Mr. Geoffrey Shannon and Norah Gibbons was recently published. I welcome that we are now putting in place robust legislation to ensure that the type of incidents reported in those reports will not happen again and that there can be no defence of ignorance in the future. On that basis, Fianna Fáil will be supporting this legislation. Fianna Fáil welcomes any legislation that genuinely strengthens child protection in Ireland. The Minister has been at pains to emphasise the legal side of this, which was the theme of much discussion at the hearings on the Bill. Many of the support groups were concerned that people who engaged with them would feel they had to make a legal claim. The Minister has made appropriate allocation for this situation. We would hate to think people would deny themselves the supports available for fear of having to go through the criminal law process. I welcome the fact the Minister improved the heads of the Bill to do this.

The big challenge with regard to the legislation is probably not with the Minister's Department but with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the Minister, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, in ensuring the resources the legislation will require are in place. She made comments over the weekend on her intention to pursue the Shannon and Gibbons report and I believe all of us will support her on this. On the passage of this legislation and the Children First legislation a very comprehensive information campaign will be necessary with regard to people's rights and responsibilities. This Bill and the Children First legislation mark a new era in the maintenance of information and the treatment of child protection complaints in this country. I know the Minister will agree, given his strong track record in this area, that we cannot have somebody claiming ignorance of the new legislation or regime in a weakened defence.

With such an information campaign it is probably inevitable to expect we will share the experiences of many other jurisdictions with regard to a surge in cases being reported. In the course of his summing up I ask the Minister to clarify what is meant by the reference in the Bill to knowledge previously available but not provided. Will this prevent the situation which happened in other jurisdictions whereby there was a huge increase in the number of complaints, some of which were vexatious? The difficulty with such an increase is that unless we ramp up the system some of the more serious complaints will get lost. When mandatory reporting was introduced in New South Wales it resulted in a 600% increase. Such an increase would be unbearable unless the appropriate resources are put in place.

The number of available social workers was increased on the basis of the Ryan report. However this pool was reduced through retirements last February and we need to ensure their replacements are found as quickly as possible. This is one of the difficulties and challenges facing the Minister and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. It is not the role of the Minister to put in place the budget for this but will he give us a guarantee or assurance that the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Fitzgerald, and the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, are aware of the potential consequences of this Bill in terms of their resources and that we will not have a situation whereby cases may get lost or delayed in the avalanche and victims may not get the justice they should expect to receive under the legislation? With regard to the expectations that are being created, many people did not have access to this type of legislation. Some people did not have the opportunity to access the legislation on the various redress schemes and we owe it to those who will now have such an opportunity that if they make a proper complaint it will not be lost in the avalanche of complaints that will arise out of this.

The national review panel stated its workload was virtually impossible to carry out because of the number and breadth of inquiries. Since March 2010, 35 children or young adults in HSE care or known to child protection services have died. This is in addition to those on which the report was issued last week. The national review panel highlighted several deficiencies in our current child protection system, several breaches of the Children First guidelines, inadequate supervision of HSE practices and an absence of a standardised method of assessing the needs of children and young people who came to the attention of social services. I know the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, is seeking to address all of this with the new children's agency. I ask the Minister to clarify whether the implementation of this legislation will be housed in the Department of Justice and Law Reform or the new children's agency? Which Department will be responsible for monitoring the legislation? Will it be the Department of Justice and Law Reform or the Department of Children and Youth Affairs?

It would be appropriate a year after the implementation of the legislation to have a report to the committee to examine whether a surge of complaints has been created, how such surges are managed, and whether the required resources for the implementation of the legislation are in place. This would be of assistance to everybody.

Mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse was never policy in any part of the UK and the Munro review there did not recommend it. However, given our history in this very small jurisdiction we must go down this road. We must give confidence that protection is available and that people's stories will be heard properly. We cannot avoid this. The safeguards to be put in place through this legislation will eventually weed out vexatious claims and gossip, as the Minister mentioned, and they are the last thing we need.

The biggest challenge we face is to ensure the resources are in place. We need to ensure when the new agency is being established that nothing gets lost in the transfer of responsibilities from the HSE to the new agency, as otherwise the legislation will be considerably weakened. There must be joint planning between the Minister for Justice and Law Reform and the Minister of Children and Youth Affairs in the coming weeks and months on the establishment of the new agency and ensuring the legislation is co-ordinated between the two Departments and the Department of Health and, most importantly, that a service delivery plan is co-ordinated with an appropriate budget in place and that we do not have the situation, as often arises, that one Department blames another if something does not happen. We can avoid this if the three Ministers, or people in their offices, take a share of the implementation and we have a joint implementation body, so that nobody can blame a crack in the system for the lack of implementing the legislation.

Those who are survivors of abuse may have mixed feelings about today. The Oireachtas is sending out a message that we are drawing a line under what happened previously and that there will be no hiding place for those who have information and will not share it. One will no longer be able to legally justify - and in my opinion one could never have justified it morally - hiding information on the abuse of a child regardless of the role one has. We will now have the power of the law behind this. It is being done in a way to dissuade gossip, messers and people with alternative agendas other than the interests of a child and it is to be welcomed. The committee debate on the heads of the Bill was constructive and I hope this constructive debate continues on Second Stage. We are due to take Committee Stage next week so it will not be a challenge for us to implement this and have it signed into law prior to the summer recess.

See this speech in context