Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

I wish to join with my Sinn Féin colleagues in welcoming this Bill. The legislation before us, together with the Children's Bill and the National Vetting Bureau Bill, shows a shift in attitude towards the protection of children and other vulnerable citizens. I heartily welcome that, but I would like to restate my colleague Deputy Jonathan O'Brien's concerns that these pieces of legislation must complement one another. All legislation enacted to protect affected vulnerable adults must be in line with the provisions of new mental capacity legislation.

It is important to state outright that mandatory reporting is a good thing. Concerns regarding resources are not a sufficient excuse for turning a blind eye to situations where children and vulnerable adults are being harmed or are in danger of harm. The State must ensure that children are protected and that anybody who knows a child is being abused has a responsibility, under the terms of the legislation, to make a report. While the sheer scale of historical institutional abuse may never happen again, our goal must be to put in place every measure necessary to protect all of our children in every situation.

Legislation is important but it will not of itself protect children and vulnerable adults without vigorous support services being in place. This is where my uncertainty creeps in. To be frank, I simply do not have confidence in the Government's ability to properly resource support services. Any family who has endured the tragic experience of having to support a child through the legal quagmire of an abuse case - particularly one taken by the State - will tell of the delays in obtaining those necessary supports. Children can often wait months to receive the necessary counselling and physiological support. Parents or guardians trying to cope with such a revelation - as well as dealing with gardaí and the DPP's office, while struggling with their own heartache - receive no counselling at all. The gardaí dealing with their case are often the only support that families receive. It can take up to two years for a straightforward case to reach the courts. Once families get to court, there are little or no supports, bar the great work done by voluntary services. A case can take up to a week in the criminal court. I am sure any Deputy who has supported a family through such a case from beginning to end will say it is a truly traumatic experience for young victims and their families, most of whom have never seen the inside of a courtroom before.

Robust legislation is unquestionably the foundation of child protection, but the necessary support services are the scaffolding upon which real protection is built and sustained. This legislation is an acknowledgement by the State that the decades of horrific abuse experienced by our children will not be tolerated again. It is a clear line in the sand. It is a marker that states the culture of silence that colluded with those who ran State institutions, overseeing violent abuse of our children, is no longer acceptable in Irish society. We are all responsible for our country's children who must be protected and cherished at every turn. I support Deputy Buttimer's remarks that the referendum on the rights of the child must go ahead in the autumn. It should be a stand-alone item and the wording of that referendum must be comprehensive and robust.

We cannot talk about the future protection of children and vulnerable adults without highlighting the failure of the Government to redress the wrongs of the past. The Government has been in situ for 16 months. For years in opposition, they correctly berated Fianna Fáil-led governments for failing to provide redress to the surviving women and children of the Magdalene laundries and Bethany Home. Fine Gael and Labour Party Deputies, some of whom now sit at the Cabinet table, were in no doubt about State involvement in both institutions. They were unequivocal in their demand for an apology and redress for these survivors whose lives were forever framed by the abuse of those who were entrusted with their care. Yet, now that they are in Government and perfectly placed to right this wrong, the very same public representatives sit on their hands. They have hidden behind an unnecessary committee charged with investigating what we already know and can prove. They refuse to acknowledge the survivors of the Bethany Home and Magdalene laundries.

The men and women who survived do not have time on their side. They are elderly and many of them have serious health problems. They need closure. They need the State, through the Government, to step up and acknowledge its wrongdoing. They need the people of Ireland to know that their incarceration in these institutions was not their fault. Survivors must have all of this but, critically, they need support. The State still continues to refuse pension supports due to the Magdalene women after many years of work in those laundries. It is a sad irony that Government Departments of the past used these laundries. Yet, Departments today refuse to pay pensions due to these women. Survivors need urgent access to health care. Many of them suffer serious illnesses directly attributable to the abuse they endured in these institutions. Some 219 children, who died in Bethany Home between 1922 and 1949, lie in an unmarked grave in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold's Cross.

In 1939, the Government's Deputy Chief Medical Officer refuted damning public and health inspectorate concerns in regard to the standards of care at Bethany Home on the basis of a barbaric belief that it was normal for children of unmarried mothers to suffer from starvation. While no action was taken by the Government to protect the children in Bethany Home, which was a Protestant run home, the State did force the home to cease admitting Catholic mothers and babies. What does that say about the State, its orientation and actions?

Let us not forget the State has already accepted that there was abuse in the Magdalene laundries. This abuse is starkly documented in the Ryan report published in 2009 and in the heartbreaking detail of survivor testimonies collected by the Justice for Magdalene Group. The Ryan report and these testimonies recount that women's labour in the Magdalene laundries was forced and wholly unpaid, working conditions were harsh and women were completely deprived of their liberty, many of them of their children, and suffered physical and horrendous emotional abuse. Yet, this Government, like the previous Government, refuses to accept its and our responsibility for this abuse. Ministers continue to deny their responsibility to the women and children of Bethany Home and the Magdalene laundries. This refusal cannot and must not continue.

I believe the Government wishes to the right things in respect of child protection. Sinn Féin will support it every step of the way, when the right things are being done. In addressing the welfare and protection of our children now and into the future, we must make amends to those children and women, many of them young at the time, who were so deprived, brutalised and wronged by our State and who, by they Catholic or Protestant, now need an acknowledgement and apology from this State which had a duty care to each and every one of them.

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