Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I wish to share my time with Deputy Regina Doherty.

Dáil Éireann meets today to discuss allegations made by Ms Maíria Cahill against the IRA and that organisation's handling of them. These are allegations of rape and abuse. Since Ms Cahill brought such matters to public attention, her testimony has been both chilling and compelling. It has been notably coherent, sanguine and consistent and above all, it has been sincere and dignified. In short, it has been the polar opposite of the Sinn Féin response, whether it be here in the Dáil, on television or radio, in tweets or blogs or in post-dinner remarks. There are some who would say that Ms Cahill opted not to proceed with her case before a jury of her peers and that she now seeks to have an assessment of the facts through Dáil privilege and the media. However, that logic does not apply in the context of the residual rule and culture involving bank heists, racketeering, secret courts, punishment beatings, mutilations, executions, pay-offs, community policing and, of course, republican relocation. Equally, Maíria Cahill is an intelligent women but she also was a terrified young woman, because she knew the price that could be either paid or extracted for daring to breach republican omerta. One must remember another woman who dared to offend republican sensibilities and who disappeared. She had succumbed to a reflex and instinct as a mother and if offering a cushion meant being disappeared with the attendant annihilation of the tender lives of ten young children, what then would it mean for a young woman to get into the witness box and volunteer evidence against the volunteers?

As Members are aware, Maíria Cahill's situation found its way to the IRA on how she was raped, abused and violated by one of their own, the men and women who had the delusion and the gall to refer to themselves as Óglaigh na hÉireann. To a small few she disclosed how, over months forcibly and against what we know now is her formidable will, she was ritually and habitually degraded. Moreover, Deputy Adams, contrary to that chat with you - the one which she not so much recounts as vividly relives - she as the victim did not give her manipulated consent, tacit or otherwise. She as the victim felt horrified and traumatised and when this shaken young women was obliged to face the unshakeable men of the IRA about this gross violation of her very person, instead of manning up and doing what real men would have done, which would have been to comfort her and reassure that yes, this was grievously wrong and no, none of this was her fault, they did the polar opposite. Drawing themselves up to their full political height and paramilitary weight, they objectified her, humiliated her and degraded her all over again. Moreover, with their kangaroo court and their pop psychology idiocy, they inflicted on a traumatised young women an extravagant, and for them exquisite, cruelty. Perhaps in retrospect, they can tell Members the body language for "I am distraught" or "I am terrified" or "I am repulsed". For any Sinn Féin Members, if the lexicon of such language is not to hand, they can look up into the Gallery and see one particular women with a body, mind and spirit that states, in its dignity and inner stillness, "you humiliated me once, you injured me once, you defeated me once but I will never give up and you will never win because I will never be silenced".

The IRA did all of this simply because it could. Its members did this because they had all the power and no responsibility. They did it because as a secret organisation, they had their own logic, sensibility, system and rules. Above all, they had its own enthralling vision of what constituted crime and what constituted punishment. Since they both had and were their own private army, they could be judge, jury, banisher and executioner and none of the people moved have appeared before any court in this jurisdiction on these charges. Like any other institution with its arcane rules and logic and law unto itself, it is clear that in the case of Maíria Cahill, Sinn Féin and the IRA put the institution first. The allure of power and influence was just too much. They covered up the abuse and moved the perpetrators around in order that the untouchables would remain untouchable. It did not matter what terror they might cause or what damage they might do in these unlucky and unsuspecting communities. But who cared about victims once the institution, the organisation, in all its power and all its glory remained intact? It was a kind of unholy collusion. I refer to republicans who thought so much of this Republic that they would honour us with their rapists and gift us their child abusers. Under that elite, so-called republican dispensation, Northern Ireland could be scoured, secured and sanctified while down here and incognito, their rejects and their ejects, their undesirables and their exiles could live with and even prey on our women and children. We do not know who these men are. We do not know what they have done since they arrived among us in their banishment but we need to know and we need to find out. Today I say to Sinn Féin that if its members want to rescue any sense or semblance of credibility from these events, they will tell the legitimate authorities exactly who are these people, be they volunteers or decommissioned. They will tell us where they are and what they do because if they are a risk to any family in our society, we need to know and we must act to protect them. However, as its members do this, they should please spare us the Sinn Féin torture of language and of stretching of credibility, the republican equivalent of mental reservation. Deputy Adams should remember the words of Maya Angelou, "there is no [more] agony than bearing an untold story inside you". Down here, you buried the dangerous living along with the discarded dead. At this point, I wish to state that I welcome the letter I received from Deputy First Minister McGuinness, in which he suggests setting up a support mechanism for survivors of rape and abuse through the North-South Ministerial Council. I agree that the perpetrators of such abuse should be subject to the law and survivors are deserving of acknowledgement, support and justice. Since he at least had the courage to admit he was a senior member of the IRA, I ask him - and ask Deputy Adams to ask him - what knowledge he had of this case or others and if, in keeping with the spirit of this letter, he would be willing to share that, as indeed he has a duty to do. Indeed, I wish that all members of the Sinn Féin party would share his view on how victims like Maíria Cahill should be treated. I can but hope that their savagery - a particular savagery unleashed online towards Maíria Cahill - self-illuminating as it is, turns out to be as self-devouring as is deserved.

Deputy Adams asked me to meet four named individuals who were connected with the interrogation of Maíria Cahill. I offered to do so and they declined. Now he wishes me to meet other individuals. I regard this as being diversionary and will not deflect from the issue at hand. What I cannot accept is the attitude of Sinn Féin to Ms Cahill or to the families of the country because unlike you, Deputy Adams, and unlike you, Deputy McDonald - your usually seismic rage and righteousness about victims now, it appears clearly to me, a pathological loyalty, your compulsive denial of a cover-up in the matter of Ms Cahill - how can you state categorically there was no cover-up of the knowledge of sexual abuse?

3 o’clock

How can the Deputy categorically state that sex abusers were not moved to safe houses, particularly when her party's leader is involved in a case where a family member was denied that information for so many years? Sinn Féin has reneged on Ms Cahill, as a woman. It has let her down.

The abused have not gone away, you know. Nor will they. There will be other programmes and court cases, other whistleblowers who will need to be protected. The latter will not be dealt with in the way in which the IRA dealt with them in the past. I am of the view that the children of the Republic should not be obliged to live with the risk posed by the IRA's misfits, predators or outcasts. Unlike Sinn Féin, I will not allow our children to be imperilled on foot of a delusion on the part of any organisation which believes itself - uselessly at this stage - to be above the law. Whether they are rooted in ancient conclave or modern conflict, this Government has given them a very clear message, namely, our children and their lives are both previous and inviolate. Never again will the rape and torture of these children be ignored or blindly tolerated in order to protect or preserve organisational power, standing or reputation.

In the past three years, this Fine Gael-Labour Government has done more to make our children safe than any previous Administration in the history of the Republic. People can be proud of what has been achieved. For the first time, the children of our country have a full, dedicated Cabinet Minister. A referendum was held in order to recognise the rights of children in our Constitution. We have legislated on adoption and begun what is a major programme of legislative reform in the long-neglected area of child protection. I refer, for example, to the Criminal Justice (Withholding of Information Concerning Offences Against Children and Vulnerable Adults) Act 2012, the National Vetting Bureau (Children's and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 and the Children First Bill 2014, which will place child protection on a statutory footing. In addition, we have established the Child and Family Agency, Tusla, to protect Ireland's children from all forms of violence, abuse and neglect. We have given this agency great powers and a massive task but we are also charged with great responsibility in the context of ensuring probity and accountability of every aspect of Tusla's operation in every area and at every level. In protecting our children, Tusla must adhere to strict and high standards, namely, the tough protection demands of Children First and those constitutional rights and natural justice and fair procedures set out in the court decisions of Justices Barr and O'Neill. In order to protect our children and support our families, those are the exacting standards by which this State and its agencies must and will be bound. I refer, in particular, to Tusla in this regard and to the challenges it will face in respect of its caseload. Those challenges will not least be caused by an increase in referrals as a result of the necessarily tough demands of Children First.

Transforming our child and family services will not occur by edict, by intention or by the speeches that will be made here today. As we are aware, the business of child protection is not sweet and frequently involves the darkest and most disturbing aspects of our history and our humanity. Urgent is what our national response in respect of child protection must be. We take a different view with regard to the covering up of rape and abuse by IRA paramilitaries in order to protect the elite republication family. Our priority is the ordinary families of the Republic. With her revelations, Maíria Cahill wants to protect those ordinary families across this island, both North and South.

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