Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are back on this particular subject again, sadly. It serves us all to ponder how we got here and how we have got here on so many occasions in the past. The question arises as to whether we can be absolutely certain that we will not have to visit a similar situation to this in the future. There are lessons to be learned, which include the need for careful checking. The protection system must move into place not to protect the system but to protect the vulnerable in the event of a report, from whatever source, to the effect that doubt is cast over an institution, whether it be a State institution, foster home or whatever the case may be. We have lost our way somewhere along the line, in the sense that protecting the system has become more important than protecting the individual. It is appalling that a vulnerable person could be subject from childhood to adulthood to the kind of abuse we have heard about in this particular case. There was not an immediate response from the system to ensure that this did not happen, that it ceased and that appropriate action was taken to ensure that those involved were dealt with in a meaningful way. We seem to have a reluctance as a society about this and there is a sense that in the event of there being a question raised, we should perhaps not pursue it at all and perhaps should allow it to go away of its own accord. Things do not happen that way.

Reference has been made and people in the House have spoken about first-hand experience with their own children. Those people are in an enlightened position. They know what it is like to be dependent on the system or on somebody else to ensure that their child or young adult gets fair play. We are in dangerous territory once we start to forget about the vulnerable and move into the area of ensuring that nothing disturbs the peace and calm of the system. I have to say, and go back to what other people have said, that any answer to a parliamentary question should extract the maximum amount of factual information every time. There has been a tendency in recent years to dismiss the value of parliamentary questions and replace them with freedom of information. Freedom of information is fine, but the parliamentary question is the ultimate avenue and key for any parliamentarian to extract information of a sensitive or valuable nature. It can be done without the use of names or anything like that. It can be totally anonymous and the effect can be dramatic. I would like to see that in the future. Every parliamentary question should be required to be factual, no matter where and when it is placed or for whom or whatever it is about. It should be factually examined and all of the people who tick the box, from the person who drafts the reply right up to the top, need to recognise the importance of the job that they are doing and the necessity to ensure that we have factual information.

Why do we have repeats and so much recidivism? Why do we come back to the same place again and again? Obviously because nothing happens after the flag has been raised and everybody has protested. It then goes away and everything becomes quiet and calm again and it is all over. That should not be the case. We should learn a lesson from every single instance. We should learn the harsh lesson that once the issue has arisen once, it can arise again. Where was vetting and why did appropriate Garda vetting not take place in these situations? As a result of such vetting, why was it not ensured that vulnerable people were not under the control of people who, for want of a better description, were predators? Why should it be that in the most sensitive of services, it was possible for abusers to abuse children and adults? I cannot understand how that could happen. How did those immediately involved make it possible? These things do not happen without somebody knowing it immediately in the next bay or next window, as it were. I know that whistleblowers operated in this case but not as effectively as we would like, because there was reluctance and reticence from those in control.

In this particular case, we know that the whistleblower did not operate as effectively as we would have liked because there was a reluctance and a reticence all of the time in so far as those in control were concerned.

I hope we will learn lessons from this case and that it will be the last time we will have this kind of debate as a result of tragic circumstances involving any individual, child or adult, being abused in the way this has happened.

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