Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On Sunday, it was illegal charges to older persons in nursing home care over the course of three decades. Last night, it was the removal of disability allowance payments, the DPMA, from up to 12,000 vulnerable people in institutional care. Perhaps tomorrow we will see yet another story of a group of people being failed by the State. However, this is a much bigger story. The real story, as we see it, is the pervasiveness of what amounts to a callous legal strategy. In essence, the State approaches litigation against it in a manner indistinguishable from any faceless corporate entity. It is a war of attrition against those who dare to sue it. The route is well worn. People are denied legal rights unless they sue the State. If they do litigate, the cases are defended by the State and then, late in the day, prior to making discovery and certainly prior to going into trial, those with the resources and patience to keep going receive a settlement to avoid the setting of an adverse precedent that others could rely on in future. It happens everywhere. We have seen it in special educational needs cases, immigration cases and medico-legal cases against the State. It is also in the approach taken to those excluded from State redress schemes, such as those who have been subjected to sexual abuse in some schools, and to those affected by the Thalidomide scandal, on whose behalf I have been calling for a redress scheme for months. Again, this is a legacy issue that must be resolved by the Government.

It is darkly ironic that we are debating this issue today in anticipation of the debate later this afternoon on the mother and baby homes scheme, a redress scheme that is certain to exclude large swathes of people who were victimised by church and State throughout the last century. The context changes, but the results stay the same. People who can endure the cost and stress of years of litigation will get their legal rights, but those who cannot afford that, will not.

The Taoiseach has described this as a "legitimate legal strategy" but, rather than the vindication of rights, this is a "cost-containment" strategy, which takes priority for the Government. I have seen this in operation as a barrister where I acted for children from disadvantaged communities who were at severe risk of harm and who had been deprived of the care and support they needed. The only way to get the support they needed was to sue the State and show a readiness to go to trial. That is no way to treat vulnerable people who are being let down by the system. Those children who did not litigate did not receive any supports. The Judiciary was highly critical of that. This must be a watershed moment to see how we can ensure a change in Government policy. We ask the Taoiseach to call on Secretaries General of all Departments to come before the Committee of Public Accounts to attest to the legal strategy in place in each Department as regards litigation against the State. Is that initiative something the Taoiseach would support?

Second, would he support a re-evaluation of the role of the Attorney General to ensure he or she must take into account the common good or public interest as well as the more narrow financial interests of the Government of the day?

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