Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

They have been clarified in the courts, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will hear in a second. The false recording of a confession was not rectified for two years afterwards. It was two years before William found out, through a freedom of information request, that the fabricated confession by him was on his file. In 2014, the Garda contacted William to explain that during one of the rare occasions when William did get to see his daughter at the time, he had been accused of punching her in the stomach three times. William's name was not cleared until his daughter admitted 11 months later that she was told to say that William punched her.

All records relating to William having abused his son have now, rightly, been deleted by Tusla and Tusla has since officially apologised to William for its failures regarding him and his family. That is the correct position. In regard to the accusation that he assaulted his daughter, those false accusations were handled so badly by the authorities that it has recently resulted in her receiving compensation from the State in the High Court due to the stress that was caused. William's family has lived on either side of the Border at times and, as such, it has been failed both by the services in this jurisdiction and in the North. Partly because of Tusla's action, the matter is still not resolved in the North.

We need to do better in future. We need to ensure the ordeal that William and his family have gone through is not repeated for another family. William asked me to put these issues on the public record. His life has been destroyed as a result of it. It involved a State agency. I understand the seriousness of what I am saying. William only found out by chance, when he put in a freedom of information request, that it was on his file that a Tusla official said William admitted to abusing his child. That record has now been deleted, an apology given and compensation paid to his daughter as a result. However, this family was destroyed.

I commend some of the officials in Tusla whom I worked with when I met William many years later. I saw what I believed to be a person who was genuinely broken as a result of what had happened. When I reached out to Tusla, it did facilitate a process, which took some time, whereby we got to the point where apologies have been given, wrongs have been righted, files have been deleted and the record has been corrected. However, this should never have happened.

The consequences for this family are long-lasting. Maybe it is an opportunity for the Minister on behalf of Tusla to echo that apology to William and his family.

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