Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I sincerely thank the Technical Group for allowing me time to speak on this very important matter. I very much welcome that we are to have a referendum on children and I hope that after the vote takes place there will be a greater recognition of and a certain place in our society for young people. We all know of the awful abuses that befell some young people in years past. When we look back, as we must, on the history of the protection of children, we really left a great deal to be desired. To take the education system alone, it is not too many moons ago that corporal punishment was accepted. It was a practice that was carried out every day in our schools during that period, considered an acceptable practice by a person whose job it was to be entrusted with the care of a child for the day, to educate and, supposedly, protect that child. During the course of the day it was acceptable behaviour for that person to beat and hurt the child. That is awful. That is where we are coming from in this country, from a level and a time where that practice was acceptable. Thanks be to God it is no longer acceptable. It is no longer allowed in any shape or fashion to hurt, hit or interfere with a child. I thank the Government for its work on this matter and reiterate my welcome for this referendum. I do so in the hope that afterwards Ireland will be a better place when it comes to taking care of our young children.

I also thank groups such as Barnardos, the Children's Rights Alliance and others that campaigned very sincerely throughout the years for children's rights. Children are only young once and if something goes wrong during their childhood we cannot ever buy back the years they have lost. That is why it is 100% our responsibility, as legislators, to ensure that young people have a happy and carefree childhood. In the world we live in now there are situations where, unfortunately, parents break up and remarry. Many different situations happen. In the middle of all that there are our young people, our children, and we must ensure they are protected, that the State will be present for them and that they are people in their own right, who have their own rights even if they are only children. When I say "only children" I do not mean it in a derogatory way but to say that we must value them for what they are, namely, young people with rights.

The Children's Rights Alliance has published a document giving five key reasons to support the children's referendum. The first is that for the first time the Constitution will take a child-centred approach to the protection of all children and will allow the State better to support families who are struggling, rather than wait for a situation to reach a crisis point. I refer back to what I stated about marital and relationship break-ups. What consenting adults do is their own business but if there are children involved it is of paramount importance that they are protected.

Second, the provision will allow 2,000 children, which is a very large number, in long-term State care the opportunity to be adopted and given a second chance to be part of a loving, stable and permanent family. In a marital break-up children, for one reason or another, can find themselves in circumstances where their parents are unable or unwilling to take care of them but there are many loving couples who would dearly wish to adopt children and give them a safe and happy upbringing. They would not be seeking to adopt unless they had the financial wherewithal to bring up children and therefore we must do everything to ensure that young people who need a loving family structure to be part of will have that opportunity.

The third point made by the Children's Rights Alliance is that child care, adoption, guardianship, custody and access decisions should be based on what is in the best interest of the child. That is 100% right. This measure will ensure that judges listen to the views of children when making decisions in child care, adoption, guardianship, custody and access cases. It should be the case that judges have the best interests of the child at heart at all times. This will set out how we as a country now view and value our children and help us move beyond the damning history of child abuse. What happened to children in the past here can never be allowed to happen in the future.

As I stated at the outset, we have a damning history with regard to child care because of the situation between the State and the Church and in terms of what was allowed to happen. A commission set up in 2009 to inquire into child abuse examined the official and the unofficial attitude to children and families who were in need of assistance. Its report found that we banished those young people to industrial and reformatory schools which were established in 1858. Sadly, from 1936 to 1970, 170,000 children and young people were sent to those schools. That is frightening because they were facing into a situation where there was not adequate care for them. They were deprived of a caring relationship with adults. They were treated as if they were not real people. That is the reason this referendum is so important. For once and for all, a child will have the same rights and will be considered in the same way as an adult, which is only right.

Of the 170,000 children who entered those schools in the years I mentioned, 791 adults spoke to the commission in confidence about their experiences in these schools throughout their childhood. They reported that circumstances including a combination of poverty, illness, parental death and non-marital births contributed significantly to their admissions to these schools.

We discuss non-marital status at the time but it is a terrible indictment of what went on that children were born in circumstances where they did not have two parents to take care of them. In many instances a large majority of the 170,000 people who were admitted to these schools came from a one-parent background. Of the 791 people who were spoken to, 229 were from non-marital families; 562 were born into marital families but in 140 cases the death of one of the parents led to their admissions into these schools; 241 reported that parental alcohol abuse, poverty and family violence, and lack of care and control, led to their admission; and of the 791, only 14% were admitted as a result of a criminal conviction, in other words, for committing a crime, but the majority of crimes committed in those cases were the theft of food, fuel, bicycles and clothing. In other words, all these young people were trying to do was survive.

I hope the campaign will inform the people before they vote, and I will rely on our media to have an open debate. We are heading into the time of year when people have more time at night to watch television and follow the debates. I hope the Government, and the Opposition, will have representatives informing the people on what is being proposed and outlining that it is for the betterment, security and safety of our children.

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