Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support the calls for an inquiry. I hear what the Minister said in her speech. She acknowledges the need for an inquiry and is in the middle of taking steps to determine the best type of inquiry, to be led by the survivors. She points out on the first page that "The sexual abuse of a child is repugnant to the whole of society and is a reprehensible abuse of power and trust." I disagree with the Minister in the sense that the sexual abuse of a child was never repugnant to those who carried it out, to the Catholic Church or to the management of all of these schools. That is the problem and we have never faced it. I believe the ethos of Blackrock College is "Bold and fearless". That should be changed to "Brazen and shameless". That could also apply to many other institutions.

The Minister talks about listening to the survivors. If she does, I will welcome it. I will also welcome an inquiry if it is survivor-led. My experience to date does not give me confidence. Why do I say that? Let me look at a number of things, including the sexual abuse and violence in Ireland, SAVI, report from 2002, which confirmed that the prevalence of sexual abuse was incredibly high but about which we did nothing. Since I came in here in 2016, my colleagues and I have fought for a review of that SAVI report but we closed our ears and our eyes and did not want to know. If you look at the redress board we set up in parallel with the Ryan investigation that has been quoted so often here today, you will see that we made it an offence for people to open their mouths about what they got as an award. We made criminals of them. We then moved forward to the Magdalen laundries redress scheme, the operation of which the Ombudsman described as "maladministration". We also set up Caranua and I repeat how inappropriately named it was. It was called "new friend" when it was the old enemy. There are many other examples of absolute refusal on our part, the most recent being the mother and baby redress scheme, with which we are proceeding on the basis of saving money despite it being a completely and utterly discriminatory redress scheme.

With all of these shocking reports, we have had to rely not only on the courage of those who came forward, but also on RTÉ to give us a documentary, on Joe Duffy's show and on other shows. As a society that is learning, do we not have to ask why we have to rely on documentaries and victims having the courage to expose themselves all over again in the most traumatic way to make us aware of what is happening? On the allegations that have come forward, the current provincial has confirmed that 233 people have made allegations in writing against 77 priests in ministries throughout Ireland and overseas.

The Dominican order has received 97 complaints of alleged child sexual abuse. The bishop of Galway, who presided over a 40-year period of our morality, was a Dominican. Archbishop McQuaid in Dublin was a Holy Ghost priest, or Spiritan as they are now called. The Dominicans had 97 complaints against a large number of its order. The Carmelite order has confirmed that 56 people have made allegations against 21 members. I am racing through these facts. The Vincentians have disclosed that 46 people had previously reported being allegedly abused, and so on. I will not go into the details. The Jesuits, who we thought were above all of this, are aware of 149 allegations, which have taken 14 years to qualify. They come out as very educated priests and they are saying they are aware of 149 allegations in total against 43 Jesuits. Just one case has led to criminal proceedings. There are 124 abuse claims against 26 Franciscan friars.

I am only mentioning some of them. That is the picture within which we discuss this matter today, on top of all the institutions that have been investigated. We are looking at small parts of the jigsaw when we have never looked at the overall picture. There was total control by the Catholic Church, as represented by their bishops, priests and archbishops, over public morality. There was also the political influence and control over public affairs, public morality and personal behaviour.

Various things jump out. I think of Joanne Hayes in the 1980s. The gardaí ended up investigating Joanne Hayes's sexual morality. This investigation was led by an all-male team of lawyers, an all-male team of gardaí, and a male judge. I wonder where they were educated and I wonder where they got that ability. They come up with a theory of superfecundation: that this woman had sex with two men within a short time. I also think of the little girl in Longford who thought that her only way out was to give birth at a grotto. I think of the 1980s and all of the changes to our Constitution to control women's health. I could go on. I think of the mother and baby scheme that was thrown out of this august building, at a time when Archbishop McQuaid was in full control. I also think of Louise O'Keefe. We never listened to children. We turned a deaf ear to them and then we put every possible obstacle in their way, including non-disclosures. I will take one second to come back in later on Dr. Michael Shine. I have referred to non-disclosure agreements and to Louise O'Keefe. The State took Louise O'Keefe all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, and to establish what? She had to establish that schoolchildren were entitled to be protected from sexual criminals in the classroom. This was in 2014. This is not historical, unless there is a new meaning of the word "historical".

We then have somebody like Fergus Finlay in the Irish Examinerasking why we still allow these religious orders to exist. He wants them to be shut down. This is the same man who thought it was okay to hand over the maternity hospital to the St. Vincent's Private Hospital Group, with its Catholic-controlled ethos.

It is important also to refer to the fact that we have all been in receipt of correspondence in relation to Dr. Michael Shine. This has been mentioned a few times. There are 350 victims of Dr. Shine, allegedly, and we have not had an inquiry into that. One could despair. I do not just want to stand in solidarity with the victims and survivors, who are asking for a statutory inquiry, but to do something and to broaden the discussion to cover what schools produced our leaders, our doctors and our consultants - the people who abused women, who refused to listen to them and who determined the discourse or the absence of discourse in this Dáil over all of the years. It has been 100 years of containment in institutions, which was eloquently captured by James M. Smith of Boston College when he spoke of the "architecture of containment" of men and women, but unfortunately mostly women.

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