Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Funchion. I have been a Deputy for two years and the Minister's amendment to the motion was the most shocking thing I have seen in this House. Tomorrow, we will vote on the motion before the House and the Minister knows the Government will lose that vote. Given that he knows his amendment will be lost, I am perplexed as to why he proposed it. The motion has the support of all parties in the House. The Government will be isolated tomorrow when we vote against its amendment and support the original motion.

This is an issue I have been deeply involved with since before I was elected to the House. When I was a councillor I met some of the lads who attended Creagh Lane national school in Limerick. I welcome the lads who are in the Gallery. I particularly welcome John Allen from Cork, and echo the comments made by Deputy Micheál Martin. Mr. Allen is a fine person. I have dealt with him a number of times and his commitment to seeking justice not only for himself but also for others is to be commended. The other lads from Creagh Lane who are in the Gallery are John Boland, Christy Rainbow, David Phayer, Ger Naughton, Buddy Boland, Georgie Kennedy,Tom Hogan, William Buckley and Ger Smyth. I also mention those who had intended travelling today but could not make it in the end. I specifically want to remember those who have not survived and are not here tonight.

I and my party have worked in a co-operative way on this topic. Sinn Féin suggested what could be included in the motion, refrained from putting forward our own motion and did not table any amendments to ensure the motion passes, which I have no doubt will be the case given the widespread support for it among all parties, apart from the Minister's party. With the support of Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party and others, the motion will pass and I expect the Minister to take action on it immediately. The will of the Dáil should not be ignored by this Government whose actions to date on this issue have been despicable. I expect Fianna Fáil to use the leverage it has under the confidence and supply agreement to ensure action is taken once the motion is passed.

I will speak briefly to the specifics of the motion. It notes the Louise O'Keeffe judgment and the narrow interpretation the Government has made of it. I asked the Minister in parliamentary questions who exactly provided the advice that a prior complaint was required. Unfortunately, he failed to provide the requested information on that occasion. Perhaps he can shed some light on the matter tonight. I also asked previously about the total absence of consultation talks. Maybe the Minister can update us on their progress. I asked why the Minister is refusing to provide information to the State Claims Agency relating to ex gratiascheme applications despite the agency having requested it in November 2016 and having sent numerous reminders to the Department. Will the Minister update the House on that? I have asked countless parliamentary questions seeking information on this topic and most of the time the answers received provide no information. I can only assume this stonewalling is because the Government knows it is wrong, but just does not want to deal with the issue. That is simply not good enough.

Creagh Lane was a small national school in the heart of Limerick city. It should have been a place - an education facility - in which children were nurtured, supported and encouraged to reach their full potential. Unfortunately, for many this was not the case. It was a horror story and a true nightmare for many of them. These children were failed by a State that should and could have protected them. It is disgraceful that the men from Creagh Lane have had to put up such a fight. Having been subjected to the most horrendous sexual abuse as children, they were denied redress due to barriers put in place by Fine Gael. Some of these lads were recently quoted in thejournal.ie. Christy Rainbow, who was abused at the age of eight, said: "School was about survival, I'd be looking at the teacher thinking 'just stay away'." Thomas Hogan, who was abused at the age of six, recalled screaming and having to be tied into a buggy with a rope to be brought to school. He said: "The children never spoke about it, we just kept our heads down and our mouths shut." John Allen from Cork said: "I shut down. All I know is I was crying for my mother."

I know most of these lads personally. I went to a similar type of school not far from Creagh Lane a few years later. Many of them had not spoken about their abuse for years. Families and friends were unaware of what happened to them and what they went through. Some did not speak about what happened to them until after the case against their abuser was concluded in 2009. I remember one survivor telling me, when I met him in the Dáil just after the conviction of the ex-Christian Brother, that his mother asked him if the reason he looked back every day when he was leaving for school was that he wanted her to take him back.

The Government's handling of this matter has been shambolic and shameful. It is clear it does not understand the hurt and stress it is continuing to cause to survivors. It has forced them to protest outside the Dáil gates to try to get their story highlighted in the media and to travel to Europe to highlight the injustice done to them in the European Parliament. Their testimonies on that trip were powerful and will remain with me for the rest of my life. The Government's failure to give these men the justice they require has meant they have had to retell their heart-wrenching stories again and again, thereby reliving their awful experience, and has forced them to plead for the redress to which they should be fully entitled. This is a scandal.

In his reply to Deputies Willie O'Dea and Micheál Martin, the Minister tried to muddy the waters by talking about floodgates opening or other victims being left behind. That is not intention of the motion, as the Minister well knows.

I want to address the official statistics pertaining to child sexual abuse perpetrated by religious persons in Irish schools, which give an insight into the possible reach of this motion. The official statistics are contained in the "Review Reports by Diocese" and "Review Reports by Religious Order/Congregations" sections on the safeguarding.iewebsite. These statistics confirm that only 72 religious were convicted of child sexual abuse in Ireland since 1 January 1975. Of these, 39 were priests and 33 were missionaries, and of these 33 missionaries, 12 were Christian Brothers, so this will not open up a floodgate. As this motion is dealing specifically with access to redress for people where the perpetrator of the crime has been convicted, there is no floodgate issue and the number of people is limited. The Minister is aware of this as Victims Of Child Abuse in Day Schools, VOCADS, has provided him with these statistics. Our party leader, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, raised this issue with the Minister. At the time, she said that of the 210 survivors the State had bullied into dropping their legal cases of abuse, 15 had applied to the ex gratiascheme and of that number, eight had failed. This is disgraceful.

I return to the Government amendment to the motion. The Minister knows that with the help of Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and others, the amendment will be massively defeated so why has he tabled it? The Government amendment states that the ex gratiascheme should be open to all those to whom the criteria apply. The Government still thinks it is a case of excluding people who cannot prove a prior complaint. I am very disappointed by this stance and, quite frankly, I am confused as to why the Minister is trying so hard to block access to redress for people who were failed so badly by the State, who are now looking for justice and who are being put through hoops by the Minister. Will he give the reasons he is blocking people from accessing redress? Is it because he is worried there will be too many of them and that it will cost the State? What exactly is his reasoning? This House and, more importantly, the people in the Public Gallery who are directly affected by this, deserve to know. Sinn Féin will not be supporting the Government amendment.

The State has failed these men terribly. It failed to protect them when they were children in school at their most vulnerable. It failed them when the individual who perpetrated the awful abuse was not brought to justice for years after the events took place. It failed these men when they were forced to grow up with no supports or help for the awful trauma they went through, and it continues to fail them by putting barriers in the way of redress and making them plead for compensation. I ask the Minister and this Government to ensure this failure ends here tonight.

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