Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Over 230 people have made allegations of abuse against 77 Irish Spiritans in ministries across the island and other countries where the order operates. A large proportion of the allegations were from pupils of Blackrock College. Further allegations of sexual abuse in schools run by religious orders, including Castleknock College, have emerged in recent days.

I commend the survivors on their courage and bravery in coming forward. Of course, others have not yet come forward. I urge anyone directly or indirectly affected by this abuse to come forward. In the past, they may have felt their experience should be hidden or that they would not be believed. Help is available. Groups like One in Four are doing great work in helping survivors.

We need an inquiry into this matter to ensure we learn lessons from the past. The Taoiseach and other relevant Ministers need to urgently meet with survivors. We need a victim-led approach to the inquiry. Truth and justice for them must be at the centre. The Scally inquiry provides an excellent model. It has provided a more efficient, flexible and cost-effective model than the traditional tribunal of inquiry and commission of investigation models and led to clear recommendations. Garda investigations are ongoing but there is nothing to stop an inquiry laying the foundations now. An indicative timetable for an inquiry needs to be published as soon as possible.

The voice of survivors is paramount. The Government must listen to their views, take them on board and act to ensure they receive justice. In recent days, I read an account of the experiences of Peter, who was a pupil of Newbridge College in the 1970s. According to Peter, child sex abuse was rife at the college. It did not seem to be a secret. On his second night at the boarding school, boys in years ahead of him warned him who the dangerous priests were, who never to be alone with, who just stared in the showers and who was predatory in the dorms and, especially, the infirmary. The infirmary, he said, was connected directly to the priory accommodation where the priests lived. He was fortunate to avoid direct sexual abuse. He had a few close encounters that could have turned nasty but he ran, having been forewarned. He was fortunate but some others were not and the abuse went far beyond feeling and staring in the showers. He has attended two funerals of classmates who later tragically took their own lives, having hidden the abuse they suffered from their wives and families but having carried trauma, shame and misplaced guilt for decades in their tortured minds. He goes on to say they never told their parents for a variety of complex reasons, fear and shame being top of the list, along with not being believed. He cannot stomach the other priests who clearly knew what was going on and did nothing about it.

Unfortunately, stories like Peter's are not unfamiliar to anyone in this House. It is a pattern that has been unravelling for many years. Victims must have justice. They deserve it. The families of those who died deserve it. Justice must be done and be seen to be done. Those who cannot yet bring themselves to tell of their experience need to see a process that takes their views into account. So-called pillars of society have been involved in these heinous crimes for too long and have felt untouchable. That has to end now. As the old saying goes, let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

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