Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

One of the things that strikes me about all of this is that what sets the human being apart from all other mammals is that we have the ability to communicate. That is what makes us different. One question at table quizzes is often about the first three words in the Bible, but the second three words are more important, "In the beginning was the Word". We had words and could speak and communicate. That is why it is vital that people who do not have the ability to communicate clearly are heard. The previous speaker said that communication is not always verbal, but there are other ways to communicate.

Those who cannot communicate clearly are those who are the most vulnerable. In this particular case, a person in the care of the State was hugely let down and they are not the only one. I bet if we went around every Member in the Chamber, all of us would know a constituent, someone in our family or someone we know in similar circumstances who feels there was a large shadow over what happened in the past. Such things went on for years and years. I acknowledge that circumstances have changed, developed and improved. There are better safeguardings in place and we have HIQA and all of the other things.

The Farrelly report proves that nothing has changed when it comes to looking at the past. That we could spend more than €13 million on a report that produces zero is an indictment of the process that we have in place to be to deal with these issues. That is the key factor. We know the huge hurt and pain of the family involved, but we cannot escape the fact that we spent so much money, time and effort over years to get zero. That tells us that the State has a problem and the problem it has is that it keeps covering itself. In some aspects of this, there needs to be transparency around what happens. The State has to come clean when it comes to these issues and cannot continue to have a process whereby something is covered up and then something else is covered up in order to cover up another bit. In almost every institution of the State for years where mistakes have been made, sometimes small mistakes have mushroomed into huge problems because of the culture of covering things up. The Farrelly commission report is an aspect of that that needs to be addressed with urgency. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that happens.

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