Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Fianna Fáil supports the Bill and we recognise the efforts of Deputy Naughten in bringing forward such important legislation. The legislation aims to address an anomaly in Irish law whereby females are subjected to less stringent maximum sentences than males for committing incest. The Roscommon case of 2009, with which Deputy Naughten is very familiar, illustrated this gap in the legal system and the need to address it. It also underlines the need to establish a legal framework which actively protects the most vulnerable sections of society and children. These are the victims of heinous sexual crimes which need to be adequately punished and deterred. The Government needs to publish the Children First legislation and give effect to the referendum on children's rights passed by the people in November 2012.

Incest is one of the most disturbing crimes which can be committed against children. That close family members entrusted with the care and protection of a child could betray this duty in the most disturbing manner is a grave moral and legal violation. It is the duty of the State to establish, maintain and enforce the legal framework which protects children from this rare and awful crime. I hope the enactment of the Children First legislation will be a considerable step in this direction.

The Roscommon incest case, in which a 40-year-old woman was convicted of abusing her children, illustrated this gap in the law where different sentences apply to men and women. The appalling crimes of the woman concerned underline the need to address this discrepancy. There is something profoundly shocking about the sheer unnatural seriousness of the crimes where the mother beat, neglected and abused her own children. They bravely brought their plight to the attention of the authorities and pressed for justice to be done. A number of people in the House are very familiar with the case and with the lives of the children concerned years after the crimes were committed. It is clear that the impact on the children as they moved into adulthood was profoundly disturbing, and has an impact on their lives and the lives of those in their communities on a daily basis.

The legislation used to sentence the woman was completely outdated and was originally brought about in 1908. Reforms in 1993 excluded women, and the Bill aims to address this oversight. I hope that in co-operation with the Department of Justice and Equality and the Minister, Deputy Shatter, appropriate legislation can be enacted. It seems from the intervention of the Minister that he intends to take the content of Deputy Naughten's Bill and include it in other legislation he will introduce, which is welcome. In fairness to the Minister, he has accepted appropriate amendments to his legislation with good grace, which is right and fitting. A number of other Ministers also do this, whereby when they see a Bill with which they agree on principle, while they may not allow the Bill to proceed to enactment on its own, it forms part of their legislative framework. This is very helpful.

The case also highlighted the broader need for vigilance in potential child abuse cases and the need for a legal framework to protect children. The Government should publish the Children First legislation to give effect to the referendum passed in 2012. The entire nation was utterly shocked by the gravity of the crimes uncovered in the Roscommon incest case in January 2009. For the first time in Irish legal history a mother was convicted of incest and sentenced to the maximum seven years' imprisonment on ten counts of incest, sexual abuse and neglect of her children. The offences took place at the family home in County Roscommon over a six-year period, at a time when her children were aged between six and 15. They were regularly abused and beaten, frequently went hungry, lived in squalid conditions, suffered poor personal hygiene and endured the type of nightmare lives most of us, thankfully, will never know.

There was a major fall-out in the immediate aftermath of the case and serious questions emerged as to how a mother had been allowed to perpetrate the abuse for so long. It is still shocking to think that in 2009 this type of activity could have continued in the way it did. What had gone so disastrously wrong in a care system supposed to protect children that it took until 2004 for all of the children to be finally taken into care despite recognition of the ongoing neglect among social care and health care professionals? The report of the inquiry team established to examine the events surrounding the Roscommon child care case provides an insight. It found while the Western Health Board recognised the neglect, and on occasions recognised the emotional abuse of the children, it failed to follow up on the decisions taken by the child protection management team in a manner which offered the children the best protection.

As the report states, the inquiry also recognised that "Prior to their admission to care, the voice of the child is virtually silent" and "Yet, a basic requirement in the delivery of child protection services is the necessity to at least see the children and, ideally, to seek their views of their situation". It went on to note this is set out as a key task in Children First and that its absence in practice has been identified as a deficit in other inquiry reports, such as the Ferguson report of 2007. The report also states that while HSE staff were briefed, there was no systematic effort to embed the principles of the Children First guidelines into practice. Failure to put a legal responsibility on people to be Children First-compliant ensures that the State continues to fail children abysmally.

The report also demonstrates yet again the absolute need for the Government to build on the referendum and to legislate to properly enshrine children's rights under the Constitution. The absence of the child's voice was evident in court proceedings, most noticeably in the High Court injunction proceedings taken by the parents to prevent the Western Health Board from removing the children from their parents, at which, for constitutional and legal reasons, the parents' right to be heard was not matched by equal consideration of the wishes and needs of the children. Consequently, the Children First Bill will play such an important part in ensuring these issues are addressed comprehensively in law.

In light of the harsh lessons of the Roscommon case, I believe the Government must both support this legislation and accelerate the passage of the Children First Bill. The purpose of this Bill, when it is finally published, will be to put Children First, the National Guidelines for Child Protection and Welfare, on a statutory basis, and one hopes that so doing will ensure that a situation such as then arose will never happen again. Under the Children First legislation, organisations that are involved with children will have statutory responsibility to make sure the organisation is a safe place for children. The organisation will be required to notify the Child and Family Agency, which has been devolved from the Health Service Executive, that it comes within the remit of the legislation and to appoint a designated officer. This role of designated officer will provide the kind of protection all Members recognise as being important. That designated officer will have responsibility for ensuring that staff and volunteers are vetted, recruited and properly trained in safe practices with children and in recognising signs of abuse and neglect. The obligation to report abuse will extend to abuse and neglect wherever it occurs. The officer must make available to parents information about child protection within the organisation and must have a system in place to check and report on compliance with the legislation. The officer will have statutory responsibility to report suspicions as allegations of abuse to the Child and Family Agency, and further, where a named professional such as a doctor or a nurse works in an organisation under the legislation, he or she may report that information to the designated officer in the organisation.

In conclusion, I and my party will support every effort the Minister makes in enacting this legislation and making it part of the formal statutes that will afford greater protection to children. However, Fianna Fáil encourages the introduction at the earliest possible opportunity of the Children First legislation and its enactment without delay to ensure children are protected in the manner all Members have a responsibility to ensure. It would be deeply disturbing were a case similar to the one that brought about this legislation as proposed by Deputy Naughten to emerge. However, it always is possible, and Members must be seen to have made the greatest effort to put in place a legal framework that at least ensures the State has taken seriously its responsibilities and has attempted, to the greatest extent possible, to afford protection to the children through the various different agencies that work with children.

See this speech in context