Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody who contributed to the debate. I thank Members of all parties and none who indicated that they would support the motion when it is put to the House tomorrow. I was interested in the contribution of the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, but noted that he did not indicate how he would vote. As the survivors in the Visitors Gallery would like to know, perhaps he might communicate his intentions to them later.

This is more of the same. The Government's approach in the Louise O'Keeffe case was not to state, "The State has been found wanting, so what can we do for the victims?" Its approach was to ask: "How much further does this force us to go? What do we have to do? What is the least we have to do as a result of this judgment?" In order to facilitate that approach, it gave the judgment the most narrow interpretation possible. I will not go over the mistaken interpretation, the asinine and narrow interpretation which the Government deliberately gave the Louise O'Keeffe decision as it has been dealt with very effectively by Deputies Micheál Martin and Catherine Connolly. Even if the Government was correct and the Louise O'Keeffe judgment in the European Court of Human Rights meant what it stated it meant, the Government is not prevented from allowing people to access the redress fund where the evidence is absolutely clear. The Louise O'Keeffe judgment does not restrict it from going further than requiring a prior complaint.

We have heard all of the international evidence of children not speaking about this type of activity until later in life, the difficulties in proving prior complaints and issues back in the 1960s and 1970s, but, as if all of those things were not enough, the Government set up a second hurdle, that one had to have brought legal proceedings within the time set out in the Statute of Limitations. Anybody who consulted a solicitor about legal proceedings was told that the courts would take the view that as the teachers involved who were paid by the State were employed by school management, the State did not have a liability. That legal advice was correct and has been upheld in a number of decisions in the High Court. When the plaintiff went into a solicitor's office, he or she was told that there was no point in pursuing his or her case as he or she would be wasting his or her time and money, as well as that of the solicitor. Now we are saying if they did not ignore that advice and tell the solicitor to go ahead anyway, we cannot accommodate them. That is cynical. The Government set up a redress scheme allegedly to help people, but it framed it in such a way that virtually nobody could access it successfully access. If it is so confident about its redress scheme and its legal advice that it is a wonderful scheme, how come so few have managed to avail of it? It is because they cannot surmount the two barriers the Government have erected in their way.

The interpretation in the Louise O'Keeffe case and the artificial requirement to have brought a legal case are buttressed by another argument, a constitutional argument which is pretty convoluted from what I could make out of the Minister's explanation. It sounded to me suspiciously like gobbledygook, but I would like to see the Minister's advice on it, if he has received any from the Attorney General or anybody else. He seems to be saying that adopting our motion would mean that we would divide victims into two classes, as though we wanted to compensate one class and not the other. That is farcical, as we want to see all victims compensated. In the motion we are simply trying to reach a situation where, if the evidence is clear and the case proved beyond reasonable doubt in a criminal court conviction, the victims would be given access to the redress compensation scheme. That is not an unreasonable demand. There is no question of the floodgates opening or a victim in the absence of a conviction challenging the scheme and opening it up. Any legal opinion to that effect is not well founded and before I could give it any credence, I would like to see such advice in writing.

The Government is emphasising the role of Mr. Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill, which surprises me to some extent. I have read the terms of reference for his appointment and it is not clear to me that he is an appeal judge in respect of decisions of the redress board, or that he can reverse any of its decisions. The Government insisted on its interpretation of the Louise O'Keeffe judgment, but it is telling us tonight that it has now appointed Mr. Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill to see if it is, in fact, correct. I do not want to personalise the issue, but the Government has been extremely slow in its correspondence and communication with Mr. Justice O'Neill. It has been a while since he was appointed, but the activity and timelines do not indicate seriousness of intent on the part of the Government.

We will be pushing the motion and I hope we will receive the support of all non-Fine Gael Members of the House, as well as of the Deputies in the Minister of State's group. We are simply seeking justice, but the Government continues to hide behind evasions, legal niceties, legalese about such things as vicarious liability and references to the High Court and the Supreme Court, but these are victims of people who have admitted openly in court what they did and been convicted. Those who carried out these appalling acts had their salaries paid by the State. The acts were carried out in schools which were under the management and control of the State and which the victims were compelled, by law, to attend.

We have had a number of Private Members' motions, and I have had one or two of them, where despite the Dáil expressing its will, in a fairly emphatic fashion, the Government has simply refused to act. That is the definition of new politics. Old politics was where the Government had an overall majority and it voted down the Opposition. With new politics, the Government does not have a majority, its loses a vote but it does nothing.

I want to be absolutely clear with the Minister. I agree with Deputy Thomas Byrne in that I believe the Minister feels uncomfortable about this. From my dealings with him on a day to day basis, I know he is a reasonable man. I know he has a conscience and I know he knows that those people have been treated unfairly. In terms of the difference between the State's approach to people in residential institutions and to people who were abused by known abusers in primary day schools, I know the Minister knows that, in effect, there is no difference between them and there is nothing to justify their different treatment by the State. I know he knows all this. I advise him that if this motion is carried in the vote tomorrow, I will do my damnedest to insist this is one occasion on which the will of the Dáil will be made to operate. Let the Minister maintain his amendment, if that is his wish, but let him also know this matter will not finish tonight or tomorrow after the vote.

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