Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

It is absolutely incredible to hear of these types of abuse cases again. It is 30 years since the country was rocked by case after case of clerical abuse that came to light in such a devastating way for the victims. It is incredible that each decade that has passed since then, we have seen a repeat of such cases.

Survivors of what happened in Blackrock and Spiritans schools have displayed enormous courage in coming forward and shedding light on these horrendous crimes. I give the solidarity and support of my party to those survivors and I pay tribute to them for coming forward. It is a fact that the effects of these crimes last a lifetime. Many people are still struggling to cope with what happened to them. Incredibly, 38 people posted reports of abuse on a dedicated Facebook page over an eight-week-period. The scale of this is extremely significant. Some 25 men from the class of 1979 posted stories of abuse they suffered, which amounts to 21% of the class. There is no doubt in my mind that an extremely dangerous environment was created in these schools and there is no way that abuse was not within the knowledge of those who should have brought that information to light at the time. The abuse took on many forms, including physical, sexual, emotional and even spiritual.

First and foremost, the survivors must be at the very centre of any investigations or truth process, how they are run and what happens afterwards. Investigations should find facts, take witness testimony, review evidence, make findings of fact into the systemic issues that caused these situations and, importantly, they must be time limited. I will come to that point later. It is also important that live Garda investigations should be allowed to run concurrently. All abusers and people who were complicit in cover ups should be held to account to the full extent of the law and punished for their crimes.

On the back of meetings with survivors and the Spiritans, a pilot restorative justice programme was set up and I welcome this. Uncertainties around general data protection regulation, GDPR, have been raised with me as it is causing difficulties for investigations. I ask the Minister to resolve this if she can.

The most important issue facing us as a result of all of this is to ensure these situations do not happen again. It is important to find justice and truth for what happened in the past, but we have a moral responsibility to make sure the children of this generation going through schools are 100% safe. Abuse happens where there is power, access and opportunity. We need to make sure there is not a confluence of those three conditions in the same manner ever again in the State.

Despite decades of such information coming to light, our country is extremely poorly equipped to investigate what happened. While we hear very strong and worthy words in measured tones in this Chamber, year after year, the truth of the matter is that we do not do survivors justice. I will give a number of examples of what I mean by that. There is a pattern in the way Governments have dealt with this. We have got an apology from the Government and a promise to survivors that they will be at the centre of any investigation or process. However, we usually had a prolonged process that sometimes did not get to the full truth and left survivors being wronged by the State again.

I refer to the situation involving the Women of Honour. The women got a fine apology from the Minister for Defence. They were told they would be at the centre of the terms and conditions of the investigation that would be established to find out what happened as a result of the grievous abuse they suffered at the hands of a State organisation. The terms of reference were then written without proper consultation with the Women of Honour and the process is now going ahead independent of their support. They are left out in the cold in respect of an investigation that should have been about what happened to them.

I am also reminded of what happened with CervicalCheck. We had apology after apology by Taoisigh in this Chamber and a tribunal. Those apologies promised that no woman would have to go to court again to achieve justice for what happened to them in regard to CervicalCheck. Yet the Government created a tribunal that forced women to go to court, over and again, to get to the truth and justice about what happened to them in the CervicalCheck programme, many of whom were involved right up to the days they were dying. This is an incredible situation.

I also raised the case of Louise O'Keeffe who did tremendous work bringing abuse that took place in the school system to light. In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the State failed to protect Louise O'Keeffe. In 2019, it emerged the State system to deal with survivors was wronging those survivors. The independent review carried out by a judge of the High Court, Mr. Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill, found that the terms of conditions were so stringent that nobody was able to be processed through that. The then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, said that the State failed them at the time, it failed them a second time and it did not live up to its responsibility. He said that they would not be failed a third time. Again, the new system that was created is still stopping survivors achieving justice in that process. There was also the situation in which a survivor who did not litigate before July 2021 was ruled out of the process. In the case of two survivors, one litigating before July 2921 and the other litigating after that time, and where both experienced the same level of abuse, the latter was ruled out of the process. This is absolutely wrong. The commission of investigation system is broken.

Obviously, the issue of Siteserv is of a different order, but it is an example in which 38 modules were to be investigated, starting in 2015. Just a few weeks in, that commission of investigation literally got to the bottom of what happened in the first module. Truth and justice have to be timely. If it is denied from people, it is not justice. If it is denied over time, it is not justice. We need to make sure there is reform of the system so that it will work far more efficiently.

I also raise the case of the 350 victims and survivors who were sexually abused by Michael Shine between 1964 and 1994, many of whom were in the hospital in Drogheda not far from me. I know many of those are still awaiting the truth, an apology and justice for the trauma caused to them. We cannot exclude victims. To be honest, we are getting to the stage where no one wants to see such a revelation happen in three, four, five or ten years' time again. Is it not time that we create a permanent commission of investigation, in the same way the Workplace Relations Court is a permanent organisation, that has the necessary skills and staff and can build a critical mass of competency to be able to deal with these investigations? Is it not time we investigate everything that happened to victims in all the institutions and schools, once and for all?

Can we not put a full stop over these situations and make sure that nobody else has to come through this same process?

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