Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I raise the scandal of historical child sex abuse at St. John Ambulance. It is now more than seven months since Dr. Shannon's utterly damning report. It found that a past culture had facilitated the potential grooming of children and that the organisation had failed to intervene despite the knowledge that boys were at risk of abuse. It concluded that the organisation had failed to act against the perpetrator for years despite "a significant degree of organisational awareness" of the risk he posed to children. Why have the recommendations of the report not been implemented? Why are survivors like Mick Finnegan, who is in the Gallery, still forced to campaign for justice for, at the very minimum, the recommendations to be implemented? Why are there still three people on the board of St. John Ambulance who were either senior officers at the time of the disclosures and knew what was going on, or were on the board at the time?

This includes the person who is currently the chair. Incredibly, one of them was involved in adapting lyrics of a song to mock children being abused. How can these people continue on the board? How has there not been a clear out of the board? How come there is still no national safeguarding officer, which was another recommendation? What is the Government going to do? There was a Topical Issue about this a couple of weeks ago. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, said he had written to try to encourage it and that he was concerned about the lack of speed. We need more action by the Government to ensure the recommendations are implemented.

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