Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share my time with the Minister of State at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Ged Nash.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the allegations of sexual abuse by members of the provisional republican movement and the Maíria Cahill case. First, this is not simply a debate about events that took place in Belfast a number of years ago. It is not just about a single legacy issue from the Troubles, nor is it about how republicans policed their communities or administered their own crude forms of justice at a time before they supported the PSNI. These issues are all part of the events that have contributed to where we are today. However, this debate is actually about the present and future. It is about providing justice today for people who have been abused in the past. It is about protecting our children from those with a record of abuse and about the standards and behaviour we expect from the leaders of Irish democracy, as represented in this House.

Four weeks ago tomorrow, on a Thursday evening, I met Maíria Cahill at length in my office. I did so because I wanted to hear her story for myself and draw my own conclusions. She told me about the abuse she suffered for over a year by the officer commanding the IRA in Ballymurphy at a time when she was in school preparing for her exams.

She told me how, at a young age, she realised that she had to live with this horror for the rest of her life. She recounted the crude IRA investigation where her abuser denied the allegations, and how she was made to confront him.

She named individuals within the Sinn Féin leadership as being party to this investigation. She stated that Deputy Adams was involved in her case over a six-year period, despite his denials that continue to this day. She painted a picture of justice denied, first, when the IRA investigation failed to reach any conclusions and, then years later, when she was forced to withdraw her legal case, thus finding her abusers not guilty by default.

Maíria spoke of the trauma she has experienced since her abuse and the devastating effect it had on her life, not least having to see her abuser hidden in plain sight by Sinn Féin because her abuser was appointed by Sinn Féin as the face of community restorative justice schemes in West Belfast. Having listened to her, I was struck by her bravery, courage and determination to proceed.

She also lifted the lid on the reality of life in a community under the brutal control of the IRA and Sinn Féin - a community where the need to protect the abuser trumped the needs of the victim lest the reputation of the IRA and of the movement should suffer, and a community whose political leaders allow abusers to continue to live in the midst of children, contrary to all the rules of child protection. The first rule of child protection is to remove the abuser from the opportunity to continue the abuse or to abuse other children. That is the primary rule of child protection.

Having gone public to such effect, Maíria's case is now subject to a number of legal remedies. The Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman is conducting its own review following the ending of the court case and the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions has announced an independent review of three criminal cases linked to the original proceedings.

Those processes must be allowed run their course but as they do, we are left with two key issues to address: first, the extent of child abuse by members of the republican movement and the denials and live cover-up that is ongoing; and, second, the attacks that have been unleashed by Sinn Féin members and supporters on the character of Ms Cahill in what appears to be an attempt to warn-off other victims from coming forward.

Regarding any potential cover-up, surely Sinn Féin must be consistent? Judging them by their own words and stated standards, they repeatedly and understandably criticised the Irish State for facilitating a cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Responding to the Ryan report less than five years ago, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald said it exposed how "the most powerful men in the Catholic Church in the Dublin Diocese conspired to protect abusers of children". Deputy McDonald went on to say that this was "a gross betrayal of generations of children". She further stated that anyone found to be complicit in the cover up of child abuse "must be arrested and made to face the full rigours of the law". I agree fully with Deputy McDonald's sentiments and I ask her to apply these same standards to Sinn Féin and the IRA.

In particular, does Deputy McDonald apply this standard to the powerful man who leads her own party? Frankly, I say this because Deputy Adams's response to Ms Maíria Cahill's case has been one of denial, evasion and seeking to protect the IRA. He denies any knowledge of an internal IRA investigation or of meeting Maíria as she states, he evades any responsibility for IRA and Sinn Féin involvement, claiming that the courts have cleared the abusers, and he protects the IRA by writing that these events were "of their time" and that the IRA should be exempt from mechanisms for dealing with abuse because they have "long since left the scene".

Deputy Adams's response to Ms Cahill's claims is even more sinister when considered alongside his own inaction in protecting children from his own brother. This was after he was informed of Mr. Liam Adams's abuse of his daughter. In fact, we know from Deputy Adams's own court testimony that he did little or nothing to ensure that children were protected. For ten years he allowed his brother to work with children in Belfast and Dundalk - the two constituencies for which Deputy Adams has been a public representative. Apparently, he did so without once contacting social services or the police on either side of the Border, and if he made an intervention by other means as yet untold, such representations were clearly unsuccessful, and yet no questions that we know of are asked of Deputy Adams by Deputy McDonald or other leading members of Sinn Féin. No statements have been made condemning conspiracies to protect abusers. No parallels are drawn between this powerful man and the manner in which the leaders of the Catholic Church protected abusers. The pattern continues.

In fact, any time that the issue of sexual abuse within the republican movement emerges, Sinn Féin tries to shut the matter down. Last year, details were published of an internal inquiry into allegations of abuse by more than 100 members of the IRA and Sinn Féin. Can Deputy Adams clarify these allegations, which include allegations of the grooming and abuse of a young girl by a senior member of the IRA, serious assaults against children; and more than one hundred cases of sexual assault? Ms Cahill has repeatedly claimed that such an investigation took place and that Sinn Féin is in possession of information about multiple cases.

In normal circumstances, it would be incumbent on any Member of this House to bring such information to the appropriate authorities, yet what is Sinn Féin’s reaction to these reports? Rather than express concern at allegations of sexual abuse, rather than seek to find out if any investigation took place and rather than question the appropriateness of its party president being involved given his own record regarding his brother, Sinn Féin sent out Deputy Pearse Doherty to deny that any such inquiry had taken place. Deputy Pearse Doherty did so in vehement terms. He described claims that Sinn Féin had conducted its own investigation into cases of sexual abuse as "unfounded and untrue" and stated they marked a "new low", and so the pattern is established - deny and attack, deny and attack - and it is being repeated to this day.

It is similar to the manner in which the hierarchy of the Catholic Church denied for a long time the extent and scale of clerical abuse and claimed it was limited to one or two bad apples.

What we need Deputy Pearse Doherty and Deputy Mary Lou McDonald to do rather than repeat the denials and facilitate the cover-up, is to follow Maíria Cahill’s example and to challenge the powerful men in their own movement who have something to hide. However, rather than follow Maíria’s example, those in Sinn Féin prefer to attack her character. They do that very subtly. They deny the details of her story. They repeatedly make her justify her allegations. They unleash attacks on her online. They re-traumatise her over and over again. In doing so, they are playing a longer-game. They are setting an example, actively discouraging other victims of abuse from coming forward by demonstrating the trauma they will have to endure in their fight for justice.

At the same time, Sinn Féin portrays itself as facilitating the victim by putting forward practical solutions and new processes for dealing with the past. Yet in the suggestions the onus is usually on some other body – the PSNI, An Garda Síochána or the North-South Ministerial Council – to devise a mechanism or process for dealing with the issue, and crucially, rather than start with the IRA bringing forward its own information about abuse within its ranks, all of the solutions involve putting the victim back in the dock. Will the first step ever be taken by republicans?

Since she went public, Maíria has had to endure a whispering campaign against her on the streets, and a very public assault on her character by Sinn Féin supporters online. The least she deserves is that the Sinn Féin president calls off the dogs of war on Maíria Cahill. She must be allowed tell her story without Sinn Féin’s keyboard warriors attacking her every word.

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