Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputies Buckley, Mythen, Munster and Ellis.

I want to tell the Minister and Minister of State about two boys from Kerry, James and Michael. They were left to the mercy of this State and suffered a horrendous childhood. They were boarded out from the county home in Killarney, County Kerry. James was eight and a half and Michael was seven. The State had a duty of care to these little children but sent them to work in servitude and enforced labour. "You are here to work," they were told.

The shameful story is of James and Michael Sugrue. They were sent to a house which had no lighting and no heating. They were not properly fed and having authorised their boarding out, there were no adequate inspections provided by the State.

James, who is now 70, told me, again today, he was physically and sexually abused over many years. He was failed by the social workers who were supposed to protect him and when his education finished, his school and his council declined him a grant for further education on the basis that there would be no additional benefit to him. James went to Hammersmith and later made a life for himself in London, and has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Michael was not so fortunate. Growing up, he had been beaten many, many times, and stripped and beaten in public with a stick on one occasion. He suffered with addiction and mental health and was found dead alone in Crystal Palace in 1993. This left a void in James's life which can never be replaced.

Later in life, compounding this injustice, James was forgotten by every redress scheme. He was not recognised. He was denied a full Garda investigation. At every hand's turn, the State told him that there was nothing it could do.

Why, having listened to James, is the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, continuing to ignore him? Offering counselling to a man at this stage of his life, he says, is an insult. Give them the comfort of redress, please. For once, in this State, let them be included, or will the Minister be like Michael's neighbour who said to James after his funeral that he was sorry about his brother, they heard his screams but they did nothing. That is the only apology that they have ever received.

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