Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. Failtím deis labhairt ar an ábhar tábhachtach seo sa Teach. I begin by saying what a difficulty it is for all of us as public representatives in this House as we struggle to connect and to portray collectively the outrage of the people we represent at home. It is at times like this that all of us struggle, first and foremost with language and with putting words on how we feel, in trying to put words onto the moods of the people who are reading these stories and the heartbreak that is felt by all of us. We must get the balance right when we come to talk about a subject like this. We must put our emotions and difficulties into facing what happened. A child who was intellectually challenged and who could not speak was raped. In trying to deal with that emotion, anger, hurt and shame and in trying to put together highly academic terms of reference to govern an inquiry to look into what happened, we must try to do some justice and make some sense of what has happened. It is an extraordinarily difficult task for us to do.

We can be political about it but there is no point in doing that as this is way beyond politics. It is too far gone down that road. The people out there are not interested in whether it is Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin that are behind it. They just want answers and they want them fast. People want answers to the questions that are floating around. I must declare an interest as a foster carer myself. I mind children like Grace and others. What do we owe them? As a society and as legislators we must make sure there is not another Grace out there. How do we do that? We need to get to the answers as quickly as possible. I have no beef to hold here in defending the Government line. I have not been asked to come out here to defend the current terms of reference but I make the point on my own behalf that if we include another 46 children, along with Grace, and set up the commission to look for answers to 47 cases, then it will double, treble or quadruple the time it will take to get to the answers and the answers will all be the same. The answers are the failings, corruption and rottenness at the core of the people who had responsibility for these children. I am talking about the HSE at the time. If we go through each one of the 47 cases they will all point back to the same failings, to the same State body and the same State organisation. I believe that a first module needs to be concluded as quickly as possible because there can be other cases such as Grace's this very day. We can all express our moral outrage, shame and indignation around what has happened in the past, but what about the 6,344 children who are in the care of the State today? We owe it to them to get to the bottom of the system's failings. Of course we all want to see justice for Grace and the others but I perceive the most pressing and urgent priority to be to get to the heart of what went wrong within the HSE. There was a social worker who was in charge of this family - called the link worker - and who takes responsibility for the family providing the care. I have one myself, that is, the person who is responsible for my actions and to see how I behave when I am caring for children who belong to very vulnerable families who cannot care for the children themselves and when that great honour is left with me, my wife and my children. Why did the link worker involved in Grace's case not do his or her job? We need to know whether this still potentially is happening today or whether we have enough robust systems, checks and balances in place to protect it. I accept 100% the Minister of State's bona fides on this matter. I urge him to get on with establishing the commission and to get it as narrowly defined as possible to get real answers about what happened within the system. He should include in the same terms of reference a commitment to have a second module to look at the other 46 cases. When we look at the first case, I believe we will learn an awful lot, which will guide us when looking at the next 46 cases. We did the same with the McCabe commission and the other whistleblowers. There are many people out there looking for justice but we also have a responsibility to the here and now, to what we can control, to what we can protect and to what we can check to ensure the most vulnerable children in the State are being cared for to the best of our ability. We owe it to them and we owe it to them now. I plead with and urge all Deputies to work collaboratively and collectively and to put aside their differences by getting behind one commission of investigation that will get to the rotten truth of why the system let us down so badly in the case of Grace, with a commitment contained therein to look at the other cases. These investigations will not get justice for these people; there is a separate parallel process to get justice for these victims. As a State, we need to answer the questions.

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