Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It seems we have been on a rollercoaster since the 1990s with these revelations of abuse involving the church and educational institutions, particularly those educational institutions where the church had control. We all remember how shocking it was when we first heard about Fr. Brendan Smith and it has just continued since then.

We have all spoken previously about the many failures of the State in how it looked after or failed to look after its young people and women, in particular, people who did not have power. Beyond that we have not put in place the tools that are necessary to look after the needs of people who have been utterly failed by us, who were abused and in some cases greatly damaged. At this point, we are dealing with the issue of the Irish Spiritans. A total of 233 people have made allegations against 77 Irish Spiritan priests. That 57 of those who have made allegations are former Blackrock College pupils is utterly horrendous. These numbers are expected to increase and we do not know where it will stop.

We know what has happened with commissions of investigation, commissions of inquiry and tribunals across the board. In some cases, the timeline was too long, thereby extending the length of time that justice was denied. In addition, they came at enormous cost. We have to put something in place that can actually deal with this issue in a timelier way. We need to ensure that those who have been abused get their right to be heard. The necessary investigations need to be carried out. We need to ensure that those who did wrong are held to account as much as possible. Obviously, some of these cases will relate to people who have died. We need to ensure we do right by those who have been abused, those who are not with us and those who need support.

We need the proper means of dealing with this. Many people have spoken about a Scally-type report. We need to follow best practice. We need to put it in play as quickly as possible and we need to lay out a timeline.

That is the least people deserve. I do not think any of us can put into words the hurt, pain and damage that was done in such a disgraceful, reprehensible and inhuman way. We all accept a significant amount of abuse happens in family settings, but the problem is that people, including priests, were protected and there was a continuity of abuse where it should have been stopped at the beginning, and that is something we must address.

A man in his 60s came to my office recently to talk about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Christian Brothers. It is an issue he has probably dealt with from time to time, and he has got on with his life, but it is a pain that is always there. All we are trying to do when talking to him is to signpost him in the right direction, be it to An Garda Síochána and counsellor services. The fact is that his pain is still the pain of the young boy who was abused many years ago. We have to do whatever we can to give protection to all people who were put in a situation, in which they should never have been, by abusers and we have to make sure we do not add more pain to the pain of the abuse they suffered over many years.

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