Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

By freeing this and coming generations from the darkness of the past, Ms Cahill views her revelations as a way to open for all of us a door into the light. That light is an all-island peace based not on secrets but on truth, open and declared. Crucially, it is a peace which relates not just to our geographical co-ordinates but which lives in the heart and soul of all who live on this island. As a people, we have been fractured and broken for long enough as a result of our national obsession with putting people, truth and reality out of sight. I refer to those who were incarcerated in the Magdalen laundries and who gave us blindingly white albs and snowy tablecloths, to the generations who slept on immaculate and guilty sheets and to the mother and baby homes, the industrial schools, the reformatories, the mad houses or other institutions with walls high enough to block from our common sight any reminder of our fragility, any vestige of our vulnerability or the intrinsic danger of our private selves, our hidden identities and our loneliness and longing.

As parents, we know that our children make us invincible and vulnerable. They remind us of who we are. It is the same, I believe, for our country - our nation. In the context of this debate, which has been brought about by the courage of Maíria Cahill and the allegations she has made in respect of the IRA and Sinn Féin, it is - and always must be - a case of children first. Deputy Adams has a duty, as uachtaráin of his party - as I understand it, the Deputy has never been involved in the IRA - to identify the people to whom these allegations relate and indicate to the authorities the locations to which they were moved. This sorry saga cannot be allowed to continue. I commend Maíria Cahill on her courage and consistency and for her ability to stand up to intimidation of many sorts. I hope that what brought about this debate will bring positive results for the children who were abused - those who might be in danger of being abused - by people who, we understand, were moved into this jurisdiction.

See this speech in context