Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In the past two and a half years, we have lost three giants of the civil rights movement in Ireland, namely, Seamus Mallon, John Hume and Austin Currie. They were three of the great pioneers of peace, change and non-violence on our island. Their legacy lives on all around us.

Today, it is my honour to pay tribute to someone whom I had the honour of getting to know when I first became interested in politics. He inspired me then and he continues to inspire me today. For me and many of us in Fine Gael, Austin Currie was one of the most outstanding politicians of his generation, a person of incredible personal courage, political insight and humanity. He was my local Deputy when I first got involved in Fine Gael and it was a strange experience to see someone who was almost an historical figure attending my local branch meetings above my local pub. I will always be grateful to him for encouraging me in my early years in politics when plenty of others did not. I learned a great deal from him, and it later became my great honour to represent the people of Dublin West, a constituency that he served with distinction for over a decade. Today, I serve the families and individuals of Dublin West alongside his daughter, Senator Emer Currie, and I see in her the same passion for justice and determination to help others. I also see in her the total absence of cynicism, which is rare in politics.

Other speakers will pay tribute to Austin's remarkable achievements as a civil rights leader, how he exposed and highlighted discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland, especially in terms of issues like housing, how he organised one of the first civil rights marches in Northern Ireland and went on to co-found the SDLP with John Hume and Gerry Fitt, and how he was a politician of remarkable physical and moral courage who refused to stay silent even when people tried to intimidate and silence him and when he was threatened and attacked.

To understand him, one has to understand his unshakeable commitment to peace and democracy. Although he and his family, some of whom are present, were subjected to violence, they never once contemplated resorting to it. He always stayed true to his belief – shared with John Hume - that two wrongs could never make a right. Like Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, he knew that a people could be liberated without any need for recourse to violence, sectarianism or hatred.

When Austin died, many of the tributes understandably focused on the earlier part of his career in Northern Ireland. His time as a Deputy and a Minister of State in this State was almost viewed as a postscript, a less interesting part of his life when he took up different causes and issues. To me, however, it was a continuum of a single cause - a fight for human rights, dignity and justice for people, North and South. By remembering Austin's later career, we see the full extent of his patriotism, his courage and his contribution to our country. So, today I want to say something about his career as a Deputy and a Minister of State, a remarkable period when we saw the exact same political insight, courage and humanity on display.

In the 1990s, which was in our lifetime, there were dark parts of Irish society that we did not like to be open about or talk about, issues that we tried to ignore and pretend did not exist or just did not know how to deal with, for example, child abuse.

He showed the same courage and moral clarity in fighting these wrongs and in fighting for the rights of children as he showed when fighting for the rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland. He was appointed a Minister of State by former Taoiseach John Bruton. He as the very first Minister of State with specific responsibility for children in the history of the State. This has developed into a full Cabinet Ministry, held by my constituency colleague, Deputy O'Gorman, but this was when that role was created. It spanned three Departments: the Department of Health; the Department of Education; and the Department of Justice. His experience of how politics worked – and often did not work – made an immediate impact. One of the first things he discovered was that many of the civil servants working on different aspects of policies relating to children did not know each other, so he introduced regular meetings, bringing them together and ensuring that for the first time there was a co-ordinated approach to national childcare policy. Austin was the first Minister of State to call for the creation of a children’s ombudsman, which was built upon by the next Government when that office was established in 2002.

Austin showed real bravery in tackling the issue of child abuse and in trying to find real solutions. For example, he wanted to introduce mandatory reporting of child abuse and started a debate about how that policy might work. It took 20 years, but it happened during Enda Kenny’s first Government. When Ireland held the Presidency of the EU in 1996, Austin used that platform to speak out against organised paedophile networks worldwide and about how countries needed to work together to fight it. Austin was ahead of his time in many ways, including when it came to identifying future threats to children, such as the Internet. This was in the days when email and the Internet were new concepts. Austin represented the EU at the first World Congress Against Sexual Exploitation and spoke passionately about the dangers posed by the growing popularity of the Internet and how it was being used to transmit images of children and promote child sex abuse. He lost none of his oratorical skills, and his contribution made a considerable impression and helped influence governments across the world.

To give a small flavour of Austin's achievements , he spoke in the Dáil about child sex tourism and brought forward amendments to legislation against it. He worked to modernise Ireland’s adoption policies, provide more money for families in the family resource centres, increase the fostering allowance for teenagers and fight child homelessness. He also worked to improve childcare services and services for young offenders. Furthermore, he worked with others to establish a specialist unit to deal with family violence. As is the case now, there were not many votes in these things but a lot of good was done. When he died, Niamh Bhreathnach, the former Labour Deputy, who was Minister for Education in the rainbow Government, wrote a generous letter to The Irish Times, crediting Austin with the work he had done behind the scenes in the area of special education. Austin was driven by ideas and his belief in people. Thanks to his courage and determination, we live in a better Ireland today.

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