Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy O'Loughlin.

I thank the Minister for her most welcome statement. There were undoubtedly failures in previous decades as highlighted in the "RTÉ Investigates" programme entitled, Scouts Dishonour. However, the programme also outlined details of a case involving an alleged abuser who was reported to the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s but only removed from Scouting Ireland in 2018. That is a current failure, not a historical one. The full review conducted by Scouting Ireland in August 2012 found that no volunteers active in the commissioning organisation in 2012 were named in the legacy files but that is not the case according to the information aired in the RTÉ programme. How is it that an alleged abuser was able to continue in his role with Scouting Ireland even though the accusations had been reported in previous decades? Was his file overlooked in 2012? If so, why?

Scouting Ireland has provided a breakdown of 401 sexual abuse files it has in its possession, all of which have been reported to the appropriate authorities, which is reassuring. Of the total of 995 files in its possession, 457 were identified as involving abuse, 516 were identified as not involving abuse and ten were copies of files or legal notes. Of the 457 files involving abuse, 401 were classified as containing allegations of sexual abuse. Some 321 of them involved alleged adult-on-youth abuse. All of them have been reported to the appropriate authorities. Some 247 alleged perpetrators were identified.

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