Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for his answer. What we need now are results. In 2012, the people of this State voted to enshrine children's rights in the Constitution. Sinn Féin and others canvassed in that campaign. I met many people who were sceptical because they did not trust the State. If the Constitution is to have any value for these children, the Government must acknowledge that it is failing them and failing in our constitutional obligations to them. I understand that the issues involved go back a long time. The Taoiseach inherited this problem. He did not create it. In the past, this State outsourced its responsibilities to churches, religious orders and other institutions. This is clearly no longer acceptable and the Taoiseach played his part in that. Popular outrage is the guarantee that this will never happen again but we should not lose our sense of popular outrage. Outsourcing the responsibility for children, particularly vulnerable children, to private for-profit companies should be equally unacceptable. At the time that Tusla was established, we warned that without adequate resources, capacity and a change in culture, the initiative would fail.

Our child protection system is broken and is essentially dysfunctional. I welcome the Taoiseach's straightforward answer to my questions but if we are not to be back here next year or the year after or if somebody other than the Taoiseach and I is not to be back here again looking at another report like this, the Taoiseach needs to initiate that full Government response to which he committed and a complete overhaul of the child protection system.

See this speech in context