Dáil debates

Thursday, 11 June 2009

Ryan Report on the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse: Motion

 

11:00 am

Photo of Brian CowenBrian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

- accepts the conclusions of the Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and in particular the failure of the State and the religious congregations running the institutions to protect the children who were placed in these institutions from abuse;

- acknowledges the pain and suffering endured by the former residents of institutions and that the commission's report vindicates their claims of abuse and that crimes were committed by members of the religious congregations and others against children placed in care;

- expresses its revulsion at the extent, severity and nature of the abuse suffered by children in residential institutions;

- restates the sincere apology of the House to the victims of childhood abuse for the failure to intervene, to detect their pain and come to their rescue;

- notes that the Minister for Children will be submitting a plan for the implementation of the recommendations of the commission's report to the Government for its approval by the end of July;

- restates the acceptance by the House of all of the recommendations contained in the commission's report and its support for their full implementation;

- declares its resolve to cherish all of the children of the nation equally;

- acknowledges that the State has an obligation to ensure that children and young people in the care of the State receive the highest possible quality of care and to provide services to protect them, as far as possible, from all forms of harm;

- acknowledges that everything possible must be done to ensure the grievous mistakes of the past are not repeated in the future and underlines the importance of the Government's commitment to fully implement the recommendations of the commission's report including, in particular, to ensure the uniform application throughout the State of the 'Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children' of 1999;

- notes that the Taoiseach has met with representatives of the former residents of the institutions and the commitment to further engagement with them;

- notes that the Taoiseach has met with representatives of the congregations at which their attention was drawn to the motion passed by Dáil Éireann on 28 May;

- notes that the Taoiseach called on the congregations to make further substantial contributions by way of reparation;

- considers that the assessment of proposals for such a contribution must have regard to the needs of the former residents as well as the costs of over €1 billion being incurred by the State on redress;

- notes that the congregations agreed in their meeting with the Taoiseach to make full and transparent disclosure of their resources;

- notes that both in the meetings with former residents and the congregations support was expressed for the proposal that the use of a further substantial contribution from the congregations should include a form of independent trust to be set up by the State which would be available to support the needs of survivors for general education and welfare purposes;

- supports the request of the former residents for representation on the proposed trust;

- notes that, while the committal of children to industrial schools did not involve a criminal conviction and that no criminal records arise from that committal, the Government will give further consideration to ways of meeting the concerns of victims in this regard;

- notes that the Assistant Garda Commissioner has been tasked with examining the totality of the commission's report and that criminal investigations are continuing in respect of a significant number of people;

- notes the commitment of the religious congregations and orders to fully co-operate with the Garda in any criminal investigation being conducted;

- notes that the Government is considering the request of the former residents of institutions, made at their meeting with the Taoiseach, to re-examine the terms of the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002 in respect of the confidentiality attached to awards and the application period; and

- notes the desirability that, in so far as possible, all of the documentation received by and in the possession of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is preserved for posterity and not destroyed.

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was established in 2000 and published its report on 20 May last. That report is the subject of our debate here today and tomorrow, and surely is one of the most important reports, and almost certainly the gravest, ever published in the history of the State. It contains a shattering litany of abuse of children in care in this country over many decades. In doing so it presents a searing indictment of the people who perpetrated that abuse, of the religious congregations who ran the institutions in which it took place, and of the organs of the State which failed in their duty to care for the children involved.

It is surely right and a vindication of the initiative of my predecessor, Deputy Bertie Ahern, that the first recommendation of the report is that a memorial be erected to the victims and that it be inscribed with the words of apology that he used on 11 May 1999. I repeated that apology directly to the representatives of survivors' organisations when, with colleague Ministers, I met them last week. It is fitting that, in the light of the appalling events catalogued in the commission's report, I put it on the record of the House now also. Accordingly, I say again:

On behalf of the State and of all citizens of the State, the Government wishes to make a sincere and long overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue.

As the current Executive of the State, the Government and I make this apology having accepted the recommendation of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse that we admit that the abuse of children, and the suffering they endured, occurred because of failures of systems and policy, of management and administration and of senior personnel who were concerned with industrial and reformatory schools. We also do so because we are deeply conscious that while the events inquired into by the commission occurred, for the most part, many years ago, their consequences continue and live on in the burdens that the victims carry day by day. I want to pay tribute, as the report does, to the dignity, courage and fortitude of witnesses who came forward to the commission to recall events that happened those years ago. We should also remember those former residents who are no longer with us.

The commission has done the former residents and the State a very valuable service by producing this report. The evidence presented in it makes clear that it was right to establish a system of redress which did not require victims to rely on the limitations of a compensation system based on litigation through the courts. I am aware that some people have had criticisms to make about the manner in which the redress board dealt with issues. However, I believe that it was right to have an approach which enabled survivors to be compensated without having to go through the courts and with a very different approach to proof and evidence.

Everyone would, I think, accept that this report has radically changed the public perception of what went on in the institutions. It has vindicated once and for all what was said over the years by former residents and by some others on their behalf. It is no longer possible to deny or to doubt. The commission has spoken, the case is closed.

I want, therefore, to thank Mr. Justice Ryan and his predecessor, Ms Justice Laffoy, and all the members of the commission and their staff over the years for their work on this report, which sets out in a clear and measured way a comprehensive account of the shocking abuse of children that went on over many years in this State.

The report makes grim reading. The catalogue of horror and terror that was visited over many years on children in the care of religious congregations, placed there by the State, is appalling beyond belief. It is made even more appalling, if that is possible, by the fact that those who perpetrated the abuse had promised to uphold and practise the gospel of love and belonged to congregations founded to serve the very noblest ideals. It is worsened, too, by the repeated failure of the State, which placed the children in these institutions, to inspect or regulate the conditions in which they were held or the treatment to which they were subjected. The congregations should have loved them and the State should have cared about them. Neither did.

The report contains such horrific stories that it is difficult to know where to begin in talking about it. It provides detailed accounts of the regime and the suffering in seven schools run by the Christian Brothers, one by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, one by the Department of Education itself, two by the Rosminian Order, one by the Presentation Brothers and one by the Brothers of Charity. It also describes eight schools run by nuns, mostly by the Sisters of Mercy but including two run by the Sisters of Charity, and gives short reviews of documentary evidence about two schools providing residential care to deaf girls, though in their case most allegations of abuse referred to the harshness with which a particular mode of learning was imposed and in general the standard of care in those two schools was good.

The report contains the report of the commission's confidential committee, which heard evidence from over a thousand men and women who reported being abused as children in Irish institutions. It devotes a whole volume to the role of the Department of Education, examining the extent to which the Department ensured, or failed to ensure, that its rules and regulations were upheld by the institutions and that the basic standards set for the children taken into the care of the State were being met.

The conclusions of the report are stark. The commission found that physical and emotional abuse and neglect were endemic features of the institutions. Sexual abuse occurred in many of them, primarily in boys' institutions. Schools were run in a severe, regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff. Inspections were not random or unannounced and, as a result, the inspector did not get an accurate picture of conditions in the schools. The inspector rarely spoke to the children in the institutions.

As regards physical abuse, the report concludes that rules governing the use of corporal punishment were disregarded with the knowledge of the Department of Education. A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all of those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.

As regards sexual abuse, the report makes the truly appalling finding that sexual abuse was endemic in boys' institutions. The situation in girls' institutions was different; although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse by male employees or visitors or in outside placements, it was not systemic in girls' schools.

Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions. Cases of sexual abuse were managed with a view to minimising the risk of public disclosure and consequent damage to the institution and the congregation. When lay people were discovered to have sexually abused, they were generally reported to the Garda. When a member of a congregation was found to be abusing, it was dealt with internally and not reported to the Garda. The report finds that when confronted with evidence of such abuse, the response was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again. The relevant religious authorities knew that sexual abuse was a persistent problem in male religious organisations throughout the relevant period. However, the report finds that some congregations remained defensive and disbelieving of much of the evidence heard by the investigation committee about sexual abuse in institutions, even where men had been convicted in court.

Sexual abuse of girls was generally taken seriously by the sisters in charge and lay staff were dismissed when their activities were discovered. However, the attitude of nuns made it difficult for them to deal with such cases candidly and openly and victims of sexual assault felt shame and fear of reporting sexual abuse.

The report also makes bleak findings about neglect and the education provided in the schools. Children were frequently hungry, accommodation was cold, Spartan and bleak, sanitary provision was primitive in most boys' schools and general hygiene facilities were poor. Academic education was not seen as a priority for industrial school children and the industrial training afforded by all schools was of a nature that served the needs of the institution rather than those of the child.

There was a disturbing level of emotional abuse by religious and lay staff in institutions. Witnessing abuse of co-residents, seeing other children being beaten, seeing the humiliation of others and being forced to participate in beatings had a powerful and distressing impact, while separating siblings and restrictions on family contact were profoundly damaging for family relationships. Complaints by parents and others made to the Department of Education were not properly investigated. The Department sought instead to protect the religious congregations and schools.

I cannot in the time available describe in detail the stories of physical, sexual and emotional abuse the report contains and it would not be right to choose particular incidents or examples. Each story involves a child. I cannot pick out one child above another or elevate the sufferings of one above those of another. No mother or father, no grandparent or brother or sister, no human being with a shred of feeling could read this report without constant and intense loathing and revulsion.

One paragraph may stand as a haunting summary of the evils that were done and the opportunities that were lost. That paragraph recalls that many witnesses who complained of abuse nevertheless expressed some positive memories. Small gestures of kindness were vividly recalled. A word of consideration or encouragement or an act of sympathy or understanding had a profound effect. Adults aged in their 60s and 70s recalled seemingly insignificant events that had remained with them all their lives. Alas, often the act of kindness recalled in such a positive light arose from the simple fact that the staff member had not been given a beating when one was expected.

The report concludes that more kindness and humanity would have gone far to make up for poor standards of care. All I would add is how different now would be the lives of those who spent time in those institutions if acts of kindness and humanity, rather than of horror and abuse, had been their daily experience and how different, too, would be the reputations of the religious congregations and State.

The report presents all of us with a portrait of Irish society which is deeply unsettling. How was it that so many children were committed to institutions where not only were they removed from care of their family but they were subjected to regimes of incarceration which were cold, impersonal and degrading when they were not violent, oppressive and abusive? How did the State, in whose name and through whose courts, police and laws children were consigned to institutions which were funded, regulated and inspected by the State, preside over such conditions for so many decades? How could religious communities, founded on the highest ideals of service and compassion for the poor, so completely turn their claimed vocation on its head and inflict such suffering and neglect almost as a matter of policy? It is a tribute to Mr. Justice Ryan and the members of the commission that their report brings together in a most persuasive fashion extensive material that helps us to begin to understand how and why this came about, as well as documenting with great care the reality of the sufferings endured by generations of children, neglected and abused in the so-called care of the State.

The historical survey contained in the report demonstrates how the industrial school system came to form part of the apparatus of social control which, together with the effects of sustained emigration, came to be a primary response to the endemic problems of under-development, under-employment and poverty. As the report notes, against the background of extreme poverty, some saw the schools as no worse than anything else and as offering children at least adequate food, clothing and housing.

Children's allowances were introduced only in 1944 and only in respect of the third child and subsequent children. The report notes that the decline in numbers committed to the schools coincided with that development. It also notes that the Adoption Act passed in 1952 and the general improvement in the economic situation from the late 1950s, accelerating in the 1960s, brought about a significant reduction in the numbers committed to schools. In this respect, the industrial schools formed part of a wider pattern.

Writing about the persistence of large mental hospitals in Ireland, the late Dr. Joseph Robins, who also wrote one of the first detailed accounts of the history of residential institutions for children and played a leading role in creating the modern child care system, wrote: "Institutionalisation both under the British administration and until recent times under native government was regarded by the authorities as the most economic and controllable way of dealing with social problems". It is small wonder then that our society produced generations of what Dr. Robins rightly called "the lost children".

The desperate economic and social conditions of many in Ireland were not in any sense an excuse for the conditions experienced by those who were committed to industrial schools. The report contains a devastating critique of the failure of the State, in particular through the Department of Education, to discharge its responsibilities in ways which would have protected children. The disregard for its own rules; the absence of any effective inspection system; the disregard of such problems as the limited inspection system revealed and of complaints from parents and others; the resistance to the growing volume of criticism and unease, including from other Departments and members of the Judiciary; the failure to act on the recommendations of a comprehensive review from an independent commission established by the Department in the 1930s at a time when the industrial school model was being replaced in the neighbouring jurisdiction; and the failure to exercise any proactive policy-making or standard setting role make for an overwhelming indictment of failure of responsibility.

The report attributes this to a deferential and submissive attitude of the Department of Education towards the congregations concerned which compromised its ability to carry out its statutory duty. This is undoubtedly a very significant part of the story. However, the evidence assembled in the report suggests that the Department shared, at least in the earlier years, much of the prejudice against the residents of industrial schools displayed by the general population. It is also clear the Department feared that interference in the school system could lead to the closure of the schools and a much greater financial liability for the State. In this, as in the behaviour of the religious congregations concerned, maintenance of the institutional system overshadowed other considerations, including the safety and not just the best interests of the children. Furthermore, the evidence in the report about conditions in Marlborough House Place of Detention, which was under the control and direct management of the Department, shows that the failings were not solely based on the involvement of the religious orders.

There is little for our comfort in this House on reading the Ryan report in recognising how seldom the industrial school system and the needs of children in the care of the State were raised here. Even then, the discussion was generally about specific issues rather than the adequacy of policy and provision. As for the religious congregations concerned, the report calls on them to examine how their ideals came to be debased by systemic abuse. It states: "they must ask themselves how they came to tolerate breaches of their own rules, and when sexual and physical abuse was discovered, how they responded to it, and to those who perpetrated it and more generally, how the interests of the institutions and the Congregations came to be placed ahead of those of the children who were in their care". An initial attempt at such understanding is reflected in a submission from the Rosminian Order published by the commission and referred to approvingly in the report. It is necessary that the other congregations undertake a similar review since, in this as in all things, only the truth provides a basis for living with integrity.

Confronted with this appalling story, the report naturally makes a wide range of recommendations. Some aim at alleviating or otherwise addressing the effects of the abuse on the people who suffered. These include that a memorial to the victims should be erected with the words of the apology made by my predecessor in May 1999 inscribed on it. Also, counselling services should continue to be provided to ex-residents and their families, family tracing services should be continued and the lessons of the past must be learned by the State and by the congregations.

The second set of recommendations is aimed at preventing, where possible, and reducing the incidence of abuse of children in institutions, and protecting children from such abuse. Briefly, these recommendations are that the overall policy and practice of child care should respect the rights and dignity of children and have as its primary focus their safe care and welfare.

In pursuit of this, national child care policy should be clearly articulated and reviewed on a regular basis and a method of evaluating the extent to which services meet the aims and objectives of the national child care policy should be devised. Rules and regulations must be enforced, breaches reported and sanctions applied. Services for children should be subject to regular inspections and these inspections should meet a specific set of requirements. Children in care should be able to communicate concerns without fear and should have a consistent care figure. They should not, save in exceptional circumstances, be cut off from their families and full personal records of children in care must be maintained. Finally, "Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children", should be uniformly and consistently implemented throughout the State in dealing with allegations of abuse.

The report has been published and its findings, conclusions and recommendations are known. It is proper that I should put on the record of this House the actions the Government has taken so far in response to it. In doing so, I want to make it clear at the outset that the Government's priority will continue to be the needs of the survivors, and that we will continue to engage with them in meeting those needs and in implementing the recommendations of the report that relate to them.

As the House will be aware, the Government held a special meeting on 26 May last to discuss the report. I issued a statement afterwards which reiterated our apology, on behalf of the Government, the State and all our citizens, to the victims of childhood abuse for the failure to intervene, to detect their pain or to come to their rescue. The statement made clear that the Government accepts all of the recommendations of the commission and is committed to their implementation, and that the Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs will develop an implementation plan for them that he will bring to the Government for its approval by the end of July.

The following day this House passed a unanimous motion which among other things called on the congregations to commit to making further substantial contributions by way of reparation, in the context of discussion with the State, including to a trust to be set up and managed by the State for the support of victims and for other education and welfare purposes.

Last week, the Ministers for Education and Science, Health and Children, and Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the Minister of State with responsibility for children and youth affairs, and I, met representatives of the survivors' groups and representatives of the religious congregations, and I issued a statement after each of those meetings.

The purpose of our meeting with the survivors' representatives was to begin the process of discussion of the issues arising from the report of the commission. I told the representatives that I was very glad to have the opportunity, with my colleagues, to meet with them to convey directly and personally our sincere apology, on behalf of the Government, the State, and all of our citizens, for the failure to intervene, to detect their pain or to come to their rescue. I went on to tell the representatives that the needs of the survivors of abuse are the Government's priority at this time and that we are committed to addressing these needs, and, indeed, other issues arising from the report, in consultation with representatives of the survivors.

I also stressed that those who perpetrated crimes against survivors, no matter how long ago, must be made amenable to the law so that they can be held to account for such crimes. The House will be aware that an Assistant Garda Commissioner has been tasked with examining the totality of the commission report and that criminal investigations are continuing in respect of a significant number of people.

I am aware that many survivors are very concerned at having what they see as a criminal record. At the meeting I made the point that, in fact, as a result of legislation passed some years ago, there is absolutely no ambiguity or doubt that those committed to industrial schools do not have a criminal record on that account. There was, in reality, no criminal record in any event for those who were committed to industrial schools, although the process of committal gave the appearance of criminal proceedings. However, it is now the law of the land, beyond any doubt, that no criminal record exists in such cases, nor in the case of those who were convicted and committed to a reformatory, on the basis that they did not reoffend within three years. The Government is very open to considering ways in which this legal reality can be brought out more fully to the benefit of survivors, their families and the wider community. Liaison with the survivor groups will continue and there will be further meetings with members of the Government.

The same Ministers and I also met representatives of the 18 religious congregations on Thursday last. At the outset, I told the congregations that the Government had accepted that the failings of the State had clearly contributed to the conditions in which the pain and suffering experienced by thousands of children in ways documented in the report of the commission came about and went undetected.

However, I went on to express the dismay and abhorrence which, with the whole of the population, the Government experienced on reading the report and the catalogue of suffering, deprivation and abuse which was the lot of so many children committed to institutions under the care of the religious congregations. I recognised that there was a variation in the extent to which the congregations at the meeting are covered by the report's conclusions, and also that those now in leadership positions in the congregations, like us in Government, are faced with the consequences of actions and failings of those who have gone before them in earlier generations. However, I pointed out that some of the severest conclusions of the commission regarding religious congregations related to recent attitudes and behaviour.

I made clear that the systemic nature of the findings and the sheer scale of the suffering endured by children and the grievous abuse of so many of them while in the care of the congregations meant that there is a moral responsibility to be faced. I conveyed to the congregations' representatives directly the view of the Government that further substantial contributions are required by way of reparation. Furthermore, I said that the contributions need to be capable of being assessed by the public for their significance by reference to the full resources available to the congregations and in a context of the costs of well over €1 billion being incurred by the State. I reminded the representatives that the Government's call on the congregations had been made also by Dáil Éireann in a display of unanimity through a motion passed without a vote, and I pointed to the moral force of such a call from the representatives of the people. I emphasised that the congregations' response to the Government and the public as a whole should be clear and unequivocal.

At the meeting, and again in a press release they issued afterwards, the congregations indicated that they were willing to make financial and other contributions towards a broad range of measures designed to alleviate the hurt caused to people who were abused in their care. Also, each congregation is fully committed to identifying its resources, both financial and other, within a transparent process.

It was agreed at the meeting that the congregations would meet with the other Ministers and myself again shortly, where I expect them to outline to us the nature of the process by which their further contributions by way of reparation to the victims will be made. That process needs to be robust and transparent so that their response to all that has been revealed in the commission's report meets the expectations of a public that is demanding a definitive, strong, clear, expeditious and sincere demonstration of the congregations commitment in this regard. The extent to which this is achieved will be assessed by the Government and we will consider what steps, if any, are necessary to ensure public confidence in the adequacy of any response.

The Ryan commission report has shone a powerful light into probably the darkest corner of the history of the State. What it has revealed must be a source of the deepest shame to all of us. Children in the care of the State, and in our care, were physically, emotionally and, in many cases, sexually abused, and the State and its systems failed to hear their cries or come to their aid.

The redress board was set up to enable survivors to be compensated without having to go through the courts. The commission has reported with a clear and measured account of the suffering of children in our institutions, and with specific recommendations aimed at two objectives, namely to alleviate the effects of abuse on the people who suffered and to protect children in care from abuse.

The Government will work with the representatives of survivors to implement the recommendations relating to them. It will also have before it by the end of July a plan for implementing all of the report's recommendations. While it is clear that putting all of the report's recommendations into effect will take time it is equally clear, given the abuse of children recounted in the commission's report, and the scale of it, that we must make implementing that plan, when approved, a major priority.

It is not only the Government that must reflect and act on the commission's report. The religious congregations face an important moral responsibility, which the Government and this House have made clear to them, to make further substantial contributions by way of reparation. It seems clear that how they meet that responsibility will deeply influence how the Irish people judge finally the extent to which the congregations live up to the values of their founders. Everyone, including the general public, must reflect on what the report has stated about how vulnerable children were treated and resolve that, from this shame and evil, we will make Ireland a model of how to treat children.

Photo of Enda KennyEnda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I regret the inadequacy of the words that I will use to deal with the Ryan commission report. I cannot speak with the conviction, truth of recollection or vividness of the nightmare through which so many young children went to grow into adulthood. Nor can I speak with the power of the emotion to which I listened yesterday and in recent weeks. All I can do is speak as a citizen, the leader of my party and the father of a young family and try to imagine what those young boys and girls went through in the torture of their minds, given the extent of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Ireland cries silently with those survivors.

The report shames us as a State and as a society. The Legislature must deal with the consequences of the horrors of the past and set down what we can to deal with the future. I thank the Chief Whip for accepting a number of amendments to the motion, as they will add to the strength of the Government's hand when dealing with the religious institutions and congregations. This is a difficult time for people who stood on the street outside Leinster House yesterday and who have lived with torture in their minds since childhood. It is also a difficult time for the many men and women who have carried out and are carrying out their religious vocations in a proper and fitting manner. They must put up with the situation while following their vocations as expected.

Through the decades, the mantra was that children should be cherished equally. As we now know, the State was ignoring the neglect and abuse of the most vulnerable of our children. This was not cherishing them or Christian compassion. It was a failure to care. We stand complicit in the criminalisation of little children as a consequence of their poverty, but that is just the beginning. The State was responsible for the destruction of life. It was responsible for the destruction of that most precious formative gift, namely, childhood.

As a country, we are haunted by the Great Famine. We wonder at the inhumanity shown to the starving a century and a half ago. We should all be haunted by what Mr. Justice Ryan has disclosed, that is, a great famine of compassion, a plague of deliberate, relentless cruelty. We stand shamed and we should not excuse ourselves from it. Edmund Burke stated that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to stay silent. Generation after generation of good people knew enough about these institutions to raise questions, make themselves unpopular and rescue children, but our society stayed silent. Therein lies a crucial lesson. None of us can ever outsource human concern or compassion. None of us can ever ignore evidence of societal failure. None of us should ever hand over our responsibility for the unprotected to an agency or congregation and wash our hands of it.

This applies to politicians in particular. Every side of the House should remember that we are the voice of the voiceless and the defenders of the defenceless. We must relentlessly question. We must have and demonstrate a passion for justice and a bottomless well of anger against injustice. Above all, as the Taoiseach pointed out, we must listen. It should not have taken television producers and a State inquiry to give the victims of institutional abuse permission to tell their stories, to come forward and to be heard. Each and every story told and heard only now, decades after the horrors, fills us with shame. The pictures, emotions and reality are vivid in all of their memories. They have lived with them everyday and every night through the years.

In one incident, one Brother Percival ordered a little boy wearing callipers on his legs out of his class for talking. The little boy tried to obey the brother's orders, but was beaten in the face as he stumbled to his feet. When he fell, did the man committed to a religious life repent his actions and help? No. Instead, we have been told that the brother jumped on the boy "like he was a bag of potatoes". Yesterday, I spoke with a man outside Leinster House who stole an apple on Moore Street when he was nine years of age. He was sent to Upton and was beaten and raped repeatedly for six years. We should talk to him and try to understand from where he is coming. Such stories are repeated endlessly in the Ryan report.

However, it was not all violence. Sometimes, it was psychological. A little boy in Letterfrack had his head shaved and was sent to Coventry for a period that was to end when his hair grew back. The child was isolated from his friends and companions, the only human contacts he could trust. This situation lasted until his hair grew back. The simplicity of his account of waiting to be let back into the human race is heartbreaking. He stated: "I do not know how long it was, but it felt like an awful long time." I am sure that it did. As one who taught and is a parent, I know, as do most Deputies, that children have an unformed notion of time. Any postponement is painful. Tomorrow seems forever away. The brother who shaved the child's head and isolated him until the hair was long enough to "justify" returning to his group had a sophisticated understanding of how to deprive, damage, diminish and degrade.

Another witness told the story of a brother who, believing he was being laughed at, threw a child around the classroom. The child hit the desks and the floor. He remembers that the commotion of boys screaming brought another brother into the room. That brother pulled the violent man off the boy who, at that point, was unconscious from the beating he had received. To this day, that abused child, now grown into a man, believes that he would have died at the hands of the religious had the second man not intervened. These are the grown man's words:

I know to God that if it had not been for him coming in, I do not think I would be here today, in all honesty. When you seen this man when he lost his temper he was like a wolf. His jaws literally went out and he bared his teeth and he just lashed at me. I was running trying to get away from him. He hit me, it did not matter where, legs, back, head, anywhere. During that I must have passed out because when I came around there was water running on my head and I thought I was drowning. I drew back and I cracked my head on the nozzle of the tap so I had blood coming down, I had tears, I was soaking wet. He was not finished then. He threw me on the ground and he said "you will walk that floor for the rest of the night". The watchman did not come that night. Nobody came and I walked that passage until 6.30 in the morning. I was so terrified of going to bed that he might come back and beat me again. I walked the whole night, I swear to God.

Any of us looking at our own children can only imagine the turmoil, trauma and terror suffered in that child's head. Just imagine it.

Some of us, growing up, read Charles Kingsley's accounts of what the Victorians did to the poorest of their children. Some of us read the Brontës' accounts of what the powers that be did to orphans. We were horrified. It gave people bad dreams, but it was fiction. It had not really happened and certainly not in Ireland. Now we know different.

Now we know, courtesy of the Ryan report, that within living memory and within our own country, we visited comparable horrors on our children. Let us not hide behind euphemisms. This was not just a failure to protect. This was torture, pure and simple. That is why justice must be done and must be seen to be done. The State and the religious congregations must make atonement for the crimes they committed and the 2002 deal, as we now know, goes nowhere near that.

This is about money in part, but it not all about money. We became a black spot for decades of institutional and State child abuse. We now must become a leader in reconciliation and reparation. We must get the best expert advice to help adult victims of child abuse to achieve wholeness. We must set up a body, independent of church and Government, and trust it will work with and support organisations and individuals to develop the best response to this tragedy.

The victims have to be central to all of that. They were on the street yesterday. Their lives have been impacted by all of this. We have to try to get this right. There is no solution to happily end the horrors of the past. That is clear, but it does not absolve us. We must demand a response that draws together all the generosity, sensitivity and compassion that should have been shown to survivors when they were children.

We must move to abolish the culture of secrecy and denial still to be found in some aspects of child care services. That culture means that some reports on child welfare issues have to be published and implemented in full. That is why I say we will be judged by our actions. We must ensure those who should be before the courts are brought before them and the law of the land is applied.

We must implement in full the recommendations of the Ryan report. We must implement in full the recommendations of the national review of the compliance with children first, the national guidelines for the protection and welfare of children. We must implement the published recommendations of the Monageer report, the report of the joint committee on child protection and the first interim report of the joint committee on the constitutional amendment on children. Others will deal in greater detail with these requirements.

The corpus of legislation passed during any Dáil term is an aspect of national record-keeping. It is part of the first draft of history. However, the stories told in passion and pain by individuals are, ultimately, what matters. The media is frequently criticised by politicians on all sides, but in this instance we must give credit where credit is due, because the media, along with the survivors, brought about the pivotal role in allowing survivors' stories to be told and heard. Television, print, radio and the media in general did the State and the survivors a real service.

We cannot re-write those stories, nor can we write a happy ending to them. However, it is our clear and inescapable duty to reach out, to rescue, to listen, to learn and to create something out of this catalogue of cruelty in which, we, as a nation, we can take some pride. Ireland cries silently with these victims. I hope their tears will free the machinery of Government to set in place what needs to be done to deal with the horror stories of the past and set in place foundations that will ensure this never happens again to the children of the future.

I wish to share the rest of my time with Deputy Brian Hayes.

12:00 pm

Photo of Brian HayesBrian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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It is very important that we are debating a motion which has been agreed unanimously by both sides of the House. I pay tribute to Deputy Shatter and others who have worked with the Government to bring about such a motion. It is the appropriate response to this particular issue, that is, the publication of the Ryan report.

Twice in the past 15 months Mr. Justice Ryan asked Dáil Éireann to extend the period of time required so that the report could be published. On both occasions I made the point that after many years, it was crucial that this report be concluded as soon as possible. Now, ten years after the "States of Fear" documentary and 11 years after former Taoiseach Deputy Bertie Ahern's apology, we finally have the report.

During those 11 years, many victims of abuse have died. They went to an early grave never seeing or hearing the report we have today, a report which finally recognises in public the appalling suffering that was inflicted on our citizens. The fundamental responsibility of all of us now is to dedicate everything we do towards the memory of those who died and towards those who still live with the scars of abuse today. While we cannot change the past, this report must bring about a new approach to the issue of child safety and above all else, bring about fairer and more equitable treatment for those who have survived.

Nothing can prepare one for the horror that lies within the 2,500 pages of the Ryan report. It is an horrific and terrifying account of the shattered lives of a generation of Irish children. It is a catalogue of the most inhuman and barbaric of atrocities perpetrated against some of the most vulnerable of our people.

In my role as our party spokesperson on education, I spend a lot of time visiting schools up and down this country. One of the real achievements in the Irish education system today is the genuinely loving and child-centred atmosphere we have established over recent years in our schools. Much of that has been brought about by a new approach to teaching and by dedicated teaching professionals who are genuinely serious about providing a loving atmosphere.

Schools are, in the main, focussed on the welfare of children as their core mission statement and function. For a small minority of children today, they often find more love in school then they do at home. Our attitude towards children has changed for the better and we should never romanticise about an era when corporal punishment was the order of the day. However, substantial gaps within the system still remain and we should never smugly believe that all is well and that the abuse of the past can never be revisited. This report should act as a wake up call for how the State today treats all its children in all forms of care.

I raise the issue of the modern school to highlight the degree to which our standard and view of children has changed. A full and final settlement of this entire issue must also properly involve the victims of abuse who attended day schools in the past. To date, their voice has not been heard and their rights have not been vindicated. A new way must be found to properly address the hurt and abuse suffered by this group of children at that time.

Mr. Justice O'Neill made a recent High Court ruling on the issue of persons who were over 18 and under 21 years of age, but still in the care of the State by virtue of the fact that they remained in the institutions. It is also only fair that an arrangement is found to address that group of people who suffered abuse at the time. Why does the State continue to appeal the decision of Mr Justice O'Neill and, in effect, deny justice to that small group of mainly young women who had unwanted pregnancies at the time, while claiming that it wants closure and justice for all victims of institutional abuse? Does the Minister for Education and Science intend to withdraw his appeal, as is his right under the rules of the Supreme Court, in the wake of the publication of the Ryan report? In the same way as those who attended day schools, that group of people must also be heard. To date, their voice has been ignored.

The vast number of people who marched in solidarity with the victims of abuse yesterday is testament to the level of public shock, compassion and sorrow which this report has evoked in this State. In the publication of the Ryan report we firmly acknowledge the vindication of the claims of the children whose voices were not heard, we accept the many wrongdoings that compounded their torment and we look to the future to ensure no child ever has his or her life ruined in the same way those children's lives were ruined.

The details of abuse outlined in the report are stomach churning. The evil, sadistic and perverse acts of inhumanity which those children had to endure are unimaginable to a younger generation. We cannot pretend we understand the hurt of the survivors and the anguish they continue to bear. Those children, now adults, were stripped of every fundamental right and expectation to which a person is entitled in life. They were robbed of their identify, beaten to unconsciousness, starved, enslaved, physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually abused and tossed aside on the scrap heap of life by those who were supposed to care. Separated from their families, told their parents were dead, ridiculed, publicly humiliated and called every derogatory name under the sun, those children were treated with zero compassion and respect. Their lives were destroyed. We must not gloss over the report - no matter how unpalatable its contents and findings. To read of a child thrown over a banister of a long stairs because she innocently ate a sweet before holy communion, of another dressed only in underwear, sprayed down with a fire hose outside during the middle of winter while there was snow on the ground, and of another little boy forced to eat his own excrement because he had soiled himself is more than any person can bear.

No apology, compensation nor amount of counselling will ever reverse the systemic and unmerciful abuse suffered by people in the institutions investigated by this report. But for those who are recovering, we must do what we can to ease their suffering. For some, it is too late - they could not cope with the nightmare that life dealt them. Before addressing the lessons that must be learnt from the report, it is only right that we first address the issue of culpability and responsibility. The religious orders that ran the institutions are responsible for the barbaric treatment meted out to the children, but the State had a wider responsibility to which it ultimately failed to live up. Successive Governments of various political complexions also failed children in that time. That the children who were abused were both unwilling and unable to disclose the abuse is testament to the level of power, influence and corruption of those who hurt them. The lack of skill and training on the part of the staff and professional groups who were in contact with the abuse and failed to act to save the children involved, shows the failure on the part of the State to meet its constitutional responsibility to protect those children. That those who knew or suspected that abuse was taking place chose to ignore the information or failed to pass it on to the relevant authorities demonstrates that those children were failed by many more in their lives.

The Department of Education's failures are well documented. The "deferential and submissive attitude" it showed towards the religious congregations, the sheer neglect, ineffective inspection regime and lack of interest in protecting the welfare of the children in those institutions was appalling. In effect, no one wanted to know and no one cared. Those children became the forgotten children. The Government has apologised on behalf of the State. I welcome the fact that the Taoiseach referred to that once again today. The Minister for Education and Science should also apologise on behalf of his Department. He is not personally responsible but the attitude shown by the Department, especially in respect of the original Laffoy commission, was an absolute disgrace. At times, it appeared the Department was intent on impeding the work of the commission during the earlier part of the investigation. Had others lived up to their responsibilities in those few years we would have had this report much earlier than now. Others need to consider that.

The contribution the congregations have made in terms of the level of remorse expressed, the acceptance of responsibility and the monetary compensation paid to victims, simply does not measure up. If the congregations intend to play a significant role in the future of this country they must address this gaping wound in their history. It is not enough to acknowledge and apologise for the abuse those children experienced. If we are to learn from this dark period in our history, we must root out all inequalities in our society and do more to protect the weakest and most vulnerable. I would like to think this is an horrific example of a past Ireland, a time when reckless action and ignorance was the order of the day and children were not protected as they should be. I am fearful that history will be repeated if we continue as we have done and fail to learn from our past experience. The innocence of yet another generation of Irish children is exposed to the threat of irreversible damage and we are standing by while that is allowed to happen. We have seen many examples of where child protection guidelines have fallen short of implementation - the McElwee report is a clear case where State agencies failed to act appropriately. My colleague, Deputy Shatter, will provide many examples of where we are failing in terms of our child protection responsibilities in a broader context.

I wish to take a brief look at child protection in a school setting, the place where our children spend the majority of their time each week. I have no doubt the majority of people who come into contact with children in schools, whether they are teachers or ancillary staff, are the best of people with the best of intentions. However, as a parent, when my children go to school, I want to be sure that anyone in contact with them has been properly vetted and checked out by the authorities. The reality is that very little has been done in that regard. The most recent figures from the Teaching Council suggest that, to date, less than 15,000 out of more than 55,000 teachers have been vetted. Retrospective vetting of anyone who qualified prior to 2006 has not begun and the level of resources available to the Garda vetting unit means that is unlikely to happen in the near future. Aside from teachers, it is the responsibility of individual schools to vet ancillary staff. It is difficult to comprehend how boards of management are expected to carry out that function.

The Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, gave the impression that legislation to introduce a statutory scheme for vetting is on its way. When one examines the latest legislative agenda, one finds that is far from the case. The heads of the childcare (collection and exchange of information) Bill have yet to be approved by Government. I wish to know when it will be published and brought to the House. The Minister needs to provide assurance to the House on that Bill today.

Schools are not being given the support they need to identify and report instances of child abuse. If we are to take seriously the lessons of the Ryan report, we must address those inadequacies in the system. I recognise that resources are limited but surely one cannot place a price on the protection of an innocent child. Like many in this House, I criticised the indemnity deal that was negotiated between the religious congregations and the Department of Education and Science in 2002. That agreement was not only reckless, but was, on the part of the State, an abdication of responsibility and another example of the deferential and dated relationship that existed between church and State.

Since the report was published, there is a recognition that the entire agreement must now be revisited. The overall cost of the inquiry and the compensation provided was based on false information that was known to some or all of the parties at the time of the agreement. A raft of legal challenges and a failure to co-operate with the original Laffoy Commission meant that this report and the rights of victims were postponed for over ten years. Those who were party to the agreement did not show good faith and their actions prolonged the process, exposing the taxpayer to a liability of €1 billion.

In the discussions between Government and the congregations I believe we have a responsibility to bring these issues to a conclusion soon. No one should attempt to drag them out. We do not have time to endlessly engage in discussions before some new agreement is reached. Time is of the essence. I encourage the Government to bring all of these matters on the specific deal and a new package of funding for the victims to a conclusion at the earliest possible time.

Photo of Eamon GilmoreEamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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I wish to share time with Deputy Quinn.

Photo of Kathleen LynchKathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

Photo of Eamon GilmoreEamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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The publication of the Ryan report three weeks ago will, I hope, prove to be a watershed in Irish society. The five volumes of the report contain the personal testimonies of the shocking experiences of 1,090 men and women who were subjected to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, neglect and wanton cruelty in 216 schools and institutions.

We had all been made aware, through the vivid accounts of individual victims, that serious abuses had taken place but the full extent of that abuse was revealed for the first time in the Ryan report. It is fair to say that the sordid saga of the systematic abuse and neglect of children who were handed over by the State into the custody of religious institutions shocked Irish society to its very core.

This is not something we can dismiss as simply an unfortunate relic of earlier decades. Anyone who has met any of the individuals who suffered in these institutions, the survivor groups or who stood, as I did, and listened to speeches and watched the reaction of those in the crowd in Molesworth Street yesterday, will understand that the abuses carried out in these institutions have left a terrible legacy of pain and suffering. Our society at all levels, but primarily the Government and the Dáil, must look at the way in which the damage, the pain, the injustice inflicted on our children can be fully addressed.

The Labour Party considers this motion to be the first in a series of steps that must be taken. We accept that a collective expression of regret and apology for the failures of the State is an appropriate first step. We have, therefore, approached the motion before us in a non-partisan way and accepted a rather minimalist approach in order to secure all-party agreement. There is, however, much more than could be included and the Labour Party hopes to deal with some of these issues by way of motions or a Private Members' Bill in the near future.

One of the founding principles of the Irish Republic was to cherish the children of the nation equally. The report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is damning evidence of the terrible consequences that flow from a failure to adhere to that principle. The systemic abuse, neglect and cruelty perpetrated against generations of children in church-run State institutions is a stain on the conscience of our nation. The sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children was not, as some have tried, and continue to try, to explain away as the isolated actions of some abusive individuals. As the Ryan report so clearly demonstrates, abuse was the culture of these institutions, not the exception.

Some people argue that we should not judge an earlier generation by the standards of the present day. It is said that those were harsher, poorer times and what is unacceptable now was commonplace then. I reject the urge to explain away the crimes committed against children in our country as if they were in some way normal and unexceptionable. The State could at every stage have done better and should have done better. At a time when the League of Nations was declaring that men and women of all nations "recognise that mankind owes to the child the best that it has to give", the new Irish State looked the other way.

Using an already outdated Act inherited from the British, the State kept in place the simplest and cheapest arrangements for dealing with children in poverty or distress. They were kept in place for the simplest and cheapest arguments, namely, that what is out of sight is out of mind; that what cannot be cured must be endured because, it was claimed, we could afford nothing better. We institutionalised, through court orders, a huge cohort of young children. Their future care was placed in the hands of men and women, many of whom were wholly incompetent to the task and some of whom were entirely unsuited.

It is easy, at this remove, to revise our history and to reattribute blame. It would be extremely easy to seek out a small number of vindictive, abusive paedophiles and to put the blame for all the damage that was done at their doors but we know this is not true. Yes, the religious congregations must bear a significant burden of responsibility. They were in charge of these institutions and the welfare of their inmates. They handed on a culture of severe corporal punishment from generation to generation of nuns and brothers who worked there. Senior members oversaw the movement of known, predatory paedophiles from one institution to another, protection which allowed them to sexually abuse children for years and even decades.

We know also that these children were sent to institutions by the courts of law. We know that injured children, with unexplained injuries, were sent from institutions to be treated in our hospitals and returned to the very same institutions. We know that our Government and its Ministers presided over a completely inadequate system of inspection for these institutions, institutions that were paid for and maintained by the State on behalf of everyone in this country. A blind eye was turned by all institutions of authority and by society at large. Again and again, the needs of the religious congregations which ran these institutions were put before the needs of the vulnerable children in their care, and not just by the congregations themselves.

That deference to authority and the silence it engendered cost tens of thousands of children their childhoods and, for many, their chance to live a full and healthy life as adults. Mr. Justice Ryan spelled this out in his report when he described how what he called the "deferential and submissive attitude" of the Department of Education towards the religious congregations "compromised its ability to carry out its statutory duty of inspection and monitoring of the schools."

The court of history will judge Ireland for abandoning its most vulnerable citizens and failing to question the authority of those who failed in their duty of care. However, while the majority may in the past have been able to hide behind the defence that the extent of the suffering behind the walls of industrial schools, orphanages and laundries was not known, we have no such defence today. The full horror – the systematic terror and abuse – that characterised the regimes in these religious-run, State institutions, is now there for all to see. We have a duty to make amends to their survivors. We can start by implementing, in full, the recommendations of the Ryan report but there are other outstanding issues of concern to the victims that must be addressed.

The Minister for Education and Science must amend the Redress Act to allow for late applications to the redress board. Many victims of institutional abuse are living abroad, in particular in Britain, and were not aware of the existence of the board or their eligibility to apply to it. They must not be failed a second time. We must look again at some of institutions that were excluded from the remit of the redress board, including the Magdalene Laundries and other smaller institutions. The victims' concerns that incarceration in these institutions could be regarded as leaving them with some sort of criminal records must be addressed. Those who were committed to these institutions were entirely innocent children and that must be publicly and unequivocally acknowledged by the State. Provision in law should be made for the erasure of such committals from the records of affected individuals, similar to the proposed erasure of spent convictions.

We must look again at the confidentiality obligation imposed on those who appeared before the redress board, which prevents them from repeating in public anything of the evidence they gave to the board.

Deputies:

Hear, hear.

Photo of Eamon GilmoreEamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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There must be no destruction of any of the documents in the possession of the Ryan commission-----

Photo of Ruairi QuinnRuairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Hear, hear.

Photo of Eamon GilmoreEamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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-----that details the horrific personal experiences of the victims. A mechanism must be found to allow the material to be preserved as a reminder of the suffering of these children; the cruelty of the regime they were subjected to and the failure of the state to protect them. All of the documents relating to the negotiation of the 2002 indemnity deal must be put into the public domain.

Deputies:

Hear, hear.

Photo of Eamon GilmoreEamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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Finally, the Government must pursue the religious congregations for a proportionate response to their role in the abuse of children in the institutions they ran. The contrition expressed by the 18 congregations concerned is too little, too late. Furthermore, their self-preserving actions have undermined their apologetic words at every turn. Right up to the publication of the Ryan report, some senior clerics in the orders were denying in letters to the commission the extent of the abuse. When it came to negotiating a deal with Deputy Bertie Ahern's Government in 2002, they knew what had occurred in the institutions but they still fought to minimise their contribution to a mere £100 million. We now know this represented less than one tenth of the ultimate cost of redress for the victims. It is simply not credible that all of the orders which negotiated this deal were unaware of the scale of abuse that had happened under their watch.

Let the contrition of the orders involved be proven by their actions in the face of the overwhelming evidence set out in the Ryan report. They must be liable for half the financial burden of redress for the victims. A new fund dedicated to the ongoing needs of survivors of institutional abuse should be administered and provided entirely separately from the religious orders which finance it. I do not believe that we can ever make full restitution to the survivors and their families. No sum of money can ever adequately compensate them for what was done. We cannot give them back their stolen childhoods but we can honour their bravery and their legacy by ensuring that we will never again be silent about the needs of vulnerable children and we will never again abandon them.

The present generation needs to change the mindset that permitted this scandal to happen. That mindset accepted poverty, disadvantage, poor health, inadequate housing and the warehousing of surplus children as part of what we were. It was prepared to tolerate glaring, persistent and institutionalised inequality because we were taught to believe there was no alternative. We were told for generations that we were a poor country with little or no natural resources and which had been oppressed and victimised throughout its history. The idea that we could mount a comprehensive assault on poverty and disadvantage or provide State funded welfare for our children was a utopian ambition which had no place in the daily reality of Irish public life. The best the poor, the marginalised and people with disabilities could hope for was good will, good works and the voluntary dedication of a few, backed up by the coppers we put into the collection tins. It was a world where symptoms might be relieved while their causes went untreated. Crying needs were met, if at all, as a matter of grace and favour rather than as of right. There was sporadic and inadequate benevolence rather than a coherent and systematic effort to face up to the demands of basic justice.

It was never right to see ourselves that way but there is no justification for it now. Nor is there justification for a Government that continues to foster a culture of servility and patronage. That is the light in which we ought to review our country's claim to be a true republic with true republican notions of shared citizenship and the shared rights of all our citizens.

One could argue that in a perverse way our State was always equal in its approach to our children. Essentially, the State left it to others – parents, guardians and the religious – to get on with the task of caring for them. In other words, it was equal in its treatment of children by being equally oblivious to the needs of any child who could not be supported by his or her own parents. The story set out in the Ryan report has nothing to do with the well off. It has nothing to do with the future of children whose parents had a place in society. It has everything to do with how we treat people on the margins.

There are two basic reasons why we ended up with such a flawed system of caring for those on the margins. First, we believed in those days that the State simply could not afford to engage with ambition in improving the welfare of its citizens who were most in need. Second, we were told that the State did not have the moral or philosophical claim to engage in such a project because that was the job of the church.

We are less likely now to accept the claims of the Catholic church to an exclusive right to make provision in areas of health, education and welfare, just as the church is far less likely to make these claims. However, we have not yet fully come to terms with the demands we impose when we insist that the State itself must make provision for people in need. It is easy enough to claim we have improved the situation by closing down the industrial schools and reformatories but what are we doing today to meet the needs of children at risk? Last May, one week after the Ryan report was published, the HSE issued its review of the adequacy of children and family services for 2007. That body has a statutory responsibility to promote the welfare of children who are not receiving adequate care and protection. The review shows that social workers in the Cork North Lee office, for example, received 1,000 reports about children at risk. Of those 1,000 children, just 11 had received an initial assessment by a social worker.

In total, the HSE received 23,268 reports relating to child abuse, neglect or child welfare concerns in 2007 yet there was an initial assessment undertaken in respect of only 15,074 of them. Last year 21,000 reports of children at risk were made to health authorities but one third of these were not allocated to social workers. What is more, even when the HSE takes children into care, it cannot allocate a social worker to safeguard every one of them. While there are 5,529 children in care, just 4,623, or 84%, have been allocated social workers. The chief executive of the HSE, Professor Brendan Drumm, has stated that he has not been provided with the funding for sufficient social workers.

Ten days before the Ryan report came out, we received the report into the tragic deaths of the Dunne family in Monageer, County Wexford, or more accurately, we saw a heavily censored version. Huge sections of it were blacked out including, most extraordinary or all, some of the recommendations. How are we, as the national Parliament, expected to monitor implementation of the recommendations of the report when we do not even know what they are?

The final point I want to make concerns this country's culture of obedience. Whether it is obedience in a previous generation to the demands of the church or in the present day to the demands of the markets, we are always being told there are rules we must not question and that there are facts we must accept as given. One of these facts is that the vast bulk of primary and secondary education in this country is provided on a denominational basis. The State provides the greater part of the capital and current cost of recognised schools established by private bodies by paying the teachers' salaries, prescribing a curriculum and providing free transport to schools where necessary but the schools remain in private hands and are privately controlled. The same is true of many of the most significant assets that the State relies upon to deliver our public health services. There has been a progressive recognition on the part of the Catholic hierarchy of a new equilibrium between State and church in delivering public services. For example, the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference has suggested there is scope for a change of school patron in areas where there is no longer sufficient demand for a Catholic education.

However, the most important lesson the Ryan report teaches us is accountability and this must be at the heart of future reforms. No institution is above the law. Every institution must be examined, inspected and held to account for what it does. Where public money is involved, accountability must be delivered to public representatives on behalf of the people and, because we are now paying for them, we the people are entitled to reform our health, education and welfare systems to meet our current needs rather than the demands of those who founded them many years ago. We should begin by transferring the physical infrastructure of our publicly funded schools and hospitals into the ownership of the State. As suggested by my colleague Deputy Ruairí Quinn, this process should begin with the transfer to State ownership of the primary school network. Of the 3,200 primary schools in this State, fewer than 100 of them are actually owned by the State, with the remainder in the ownership of religious denominations, including many which are owned by the religious orders indicted in the Ryan report.

We all recognise that children are entitled to special care and assistance. Mr Justice Ryan has provided graphic proof of how badly this country let down its children. We owe him a great debt of gratitude for what he has done. In 1900, in a pamphlet called The Coming Generation, James Connolly challenged the Labour Party to achieve a country where "every child in our Irish soil will by the mere fact of its existence be an heir to, and partner in, all the country produces; will have the same right to an assured existence as the citizen has today to his citizenship". More than 100 years later, the 21st century must become the century that the Irish people hold true to and deliver on our obligations to all our children.

Photo of Ruairi QuinnRuairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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As we all do, I have limited time available to speak, and no words of mine or of anybody else in the House can undo the damage, harm or hurt caused to and which continues for those people. However, the actions that we take can make some redress to them, their children and their children's children. I appreciate the point made by the Taoiseach, which is contained in one of the recommendations, that we erect a monument containing the words of the apology that the Taoiseach uttered in May 1999 but I suggest we should go further. We should have a living monument dedicated to those people, some of whom are no longer with us, that contains their stories and memories and our records of abuse, both clerical and State, and inhuman treatment so that the walking wounded, emotionally and physically, who are the people who came to the gates of this assembly yesterday can be able to point to a permanent record of their hurt to explain in part to their children and to their children's children why they, with their stolen childhoods, could not live full lives as adults.

My next point is more substantial and I am delighted the Taoiseach is here with his colleague and friend, the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, because I have a serious set of allegations to make against both of them. The problem with the Watergate controversy was that the burglary was wrong but the cover-up was worse. We have compounded our criticism of the religious orders and the church in this regard and we have let free the horrendous record of the Department of Education and Science that continues to the present day. We have castigated in financial terms the regulators for the failure to regulate the banks but the Department of Education and Science has got away scot free in many respects and continues to do so.

I put it to the Minister that there is a continuing culture of deferment and obedience to the Catholic church and its religious orders in the Department of Education and Science that has continually frustrated getting answers to simple questions of which I will provide three examples. It is for the Minister to refute this and he knows from my persistent questioning that it is not for the want of trying on my part to establish facts free of prejudice. On 26 February I asked the Minister for Education and Science "if he [would] enter into talks with an organisation (details supplied) [CORI], some of whose members, as teaching orders, are the legal owners of many of the primary schools". The answer I received was that he would not and that the information as to who owned what school of the 3,200 schools throughout the country was not readily available in an easily accessible format.

On 10 March I asked the Minister whether he would "identify by name, roll number, location and Roman Catholic diocese, each primary school in the ownership of a religious teaching order or a Roman Catholic bishop". The reply stated that there are in excess of 3,200 primary schools in the country and my net point centres on the following paragraph of the reply:

Information relating to school site ownership and property details would have been received by my Department over a long number of years and the legal documents relating to the interest of the State in buildings constructed on sites not in the ownership of the State are generally held on individual files as distinct from a central database. Accordingly, the information requested by the Deputy is not readily available in a format that is readily retrievable.

This is what is happening on Marlborough Street and the Minister may spend much time in Cork but I wish he would spend more time there. On 28 May in another question I named the 18 congregations, which the Taoiseach met this week. I will read the second part of the reply I received as time does not permit me to read it out in full but the records are there. It states:

These schools are privately owned and as such the information sought by the Deputy is not readily available in a format that is readily retrievable [The Minister does not even change the text]. The legal documents relating to the interest of the State in buildings constructed on sites not in the ownership of the State are generally held on individual files as distinct from a central database.

Either officials in the Department are members of secret societies such as the Knights of St. Columbanus and Opus Dei and have taken it upon themselves to protect the interests of these clerical orders at this point in time in this year of 2009 or, alternatively, the Minister is politically incompetent and incapable of managing the Department of Education and Science. He went from February to last week saying that the information was not readily available.

The Taoiseach met with the same religious orders. Imagine what he could have said; imagine what power the Taoiseach could have had if he could have said to the 18 orders that, for example the Christian Brothers have 97 schools, paid for mostly by taxpayers through voluntary contributions and grants, and that the Sisters of Mercy and other orders together have perhaps 300 or 400 schools - I am guessing because these guys refuse to tell me.

The legal ownership of those schools should be transferred without any contribution and in return the schools should continue for the time being under the existing patronship arrangements until such time as we democratically and collectively decide how best to do it. We are the only country in Europe - including countries such as Catholic Spain, Catholic Italy and Catholic Austria - where the primary school system is controlled by private organisations. If one thinks they are not private one should examine the court decision on Louise O'Keeffe and how the State was not responsible for the abuse she received from a primary school teacher, who was not a religious person, but that the responsibility lies with the boards of management of the private organisations.

We have to deal with this problem and this is the way we start. The Taoiseach has asked the orders to return in two weeks with an inventory of their assets. The man sitting beside him knows what they are and he is refusing to tell me, a Deputy of this House. I do not believe the Minister, Deputy O'Keeffe, is a bad man. I do not believe he is a Catholic right-wing secret obscurantist but many of the people working for him on a permanent salary - he will be gone in a couple of years - most certainly are or else they are incompetent, lazy and destructive. He can take his choice as to what the explanation is but I have given him the facts. He and his Department are concealing from us, the citizens of the Republic, information on the nature and ownership of schools. I am unable to go into it but one of the replies I received was simply a lie; it suggested that legal protocols were in existence that prevented schools from being sold off. That is not the case for the vast majority of those schools, many of which are in built up areas and were built prior to 1960 when such protocols came into existence.

Build the monument and make it a living lasting voice of what we did. This was not some era of colonial exploitation; this was not the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the country; this is what we did to ourselves for the reasons Deputy Gilmore stated. We should have not just a monument but a living museum and a permanent reminder that never again can it happen and an explanation for those who were affected and their families as to why they were the way they were.

To learn for the future we need to take these schools and our entire primary school infrastructure into public ownership. We are paying for them and funding them. We need to get the management controls that are necessary to bring us into line with every other European country. The Government has a golden opportunity; the value of 500 schools at €2 million or €3 million each is close to €1 billion. It will go a long way in the eyes of the public towards saying that we are sorry for what happened and for our consistent denial and refusal to recognise our responsibility. It would ensure that whoever is Minister for Education and Science in the future has rational control of the infrastructure to get the best productivity from it.

The Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, has a serious responsibility to either manage that Department in a modern and effective way or to route out the obstruction that is manifestly evident in the consistent replies I have received from him in the past year.

Photo of Kathleen LynchKathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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I know the Deputy did not mean to use the word "lie". I take it-----

Photo of Ruairi QuinnRuairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I with draw the word "lie" and say "inadvertently misled the House".

Photo of Caoimhghín Ó CaoláinCaoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I wish to acknowledge at the outset the direct engagement of the Taoiseach's office with me and others in the preparation of the motion before the House for debate today and tomorrow. An agreed all-party motion was the only way for this House to address this most serious of reports and the recommendations contained therein.

I want to begin by reading into the Dáil record the text of the petition presented yesterday by thousands of people who marched to Leinster House, victims and survivors of abuse, and members of the public who stood in solidarity with them. It states: "We the people of Ireland join in solidarity and call for Justice, Accountability, Restitution and Repatriation for the unimaginable crimes committed against the children of our country by religious orders in 216 and more Institutions".

The Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is probably the greatest ever indictment of the powerful and the privileged in church and State in Ireland. Religious orders, the Catholic Church hierarchy, successive Governments and the Department of Education stand indicted for the torture and murder of children and for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The crimes were compounded by the cover-ups, and it has taken the survivors many long and painful years to expose the truth and to achieve the recognition they deserve.

The lives of children were destroyed in institutions run mainly by Catholic religious orders. The crimes included general neglect, deprivation of adequate food and clothing, denial of the right to education, forced labour for the profit of the institutions, emotional and physical abuse, sexual assault and murder. The survivors were left with a lifelong legacy of physical and psychological damage that condemned many of them to early graves and that tortures the survivors to this day.

This was a regime of fear that ruled on the dark side of Irish society for most of the 20th century. Due to the courage of the survivors in speaking out, we have known for a long time of the horror of what went on in these institutions but the report of the commission gives, for the first time, a widespread view of the full extent of that regime based, as the report is, on the direct testimony of the victims.

The confidential committee of the commission heard evidence from 1,090 men and women who reported being abused as children in these institutions. Abuse was reported to the committee regarding 216 school and residential settings including industrial and reformatory schools, children's homes, hospitals, national and secondary schools, day and residential special needs schools, foster care and a small number of other residential institutions, including laundries and hostels. A total of 791 witnesses reported abuse in industrial and reformatory schools and 259 witnesses reported abuse in a range of other institutions.

More than 90% of witnesses who spoke to the commission reported that they had been physically abused. They were beaten, kicked, flogged, scalded with hot water, held under water and burned. Many beatings were carried out in public in order to humiliate. Physical assaults were often carried out randomly and without pretext, creating a terror in children who never knew when they might be assaulted.

Half of the witnesses reported being sexually abused. On this key point the report states:

The secret nature of sexual abuse was repeatedly emphasised as facilitating its occurrence. Witnesses reported being sexually abused by religious and lay staff in the schools and institutions and by co-residents and others, including professionals, both within and external to the institutions. They also reported being sexually abused by members of the general public, including volunteer workers, visitors, work placement employers, foster parents, and others who had unsupervised contact with residents in the course of everyday activities.

Witnesses reported being sexually abused when they were taken away for excursions, holidays or to work for others. Some witnesses who disclosed sexual abuse were subjected to severe reproach by those who had responsibility for their care and protection. Female witnesses in particular described, at times, being told they were responsible for the sexual abuse they experienced, by both their abuser and those to whom they disclosed abuse.

The report is damning in the extreme of the role of the Department of Education. It was charged with ultimate responsibility for the children. It carried out too few inspections, was aware that abuse was taking place but did little or nothing about it and, in the words of the report, the Department "made no attempt to impose changes that would have improved the lot of the detained children. Indeed, it never thought about changing the system".

The Department's Secretary General, at a public hearing, told the investigation committee that the Department had shown a "very significant deference" towards the religious congregations.

The State, in the form of the Department, and the religious orders were in fact working hand in glove in this system of terror. Out of taxpayers' money the Department paid a capitation grant to these institutions for each child they detained within their walls. This created a strong incentive for the orders to push for more children to be put in their so-called "care". The larger institutions in particular could thus accumulate large sums of money which were spent on enriching the orders who ran them rather than improving the lot of the children whom they held in their virtual prisons.

Who were these children? They were predominantly the children of the poor. As their parent or parents or other family members were deemed not to be able to look after them, the children were effectively incarcerated by the courts. The State abdicated its responsibility to the children and handed them over to the religious orders.

This was a society where women and children were second-class citizens. Absolute power was in the hands of men in authority and absolute power corrupted absolutely.

This was also a conspiracy of the powerful against the powerless. People were afraid to speak out because to defy the church was to face social death, and the poor were the least well equipped to stand up to the church.

In May of last year, I raised as a matter on the Adjournment the case of the late Michael Flanagan, whose arm was broken by a Christian Brother in Artane Industrial School in 1954. His brother Kevin is still fighting for full information about what exactly took place and why, in particular, their mother was not allowed to see her son until eight days after the assault was inflicted. This was an horrific example of what went on in those institutions. Michael Flanagan was only 14 years of age. A Christian Brother used a brush handle to break his arm. The boy was locked in a shed at the back of the school for two and a half days. The Christian Brother responsible was not prosecuted or expelled from the order. The order admitted to the commission in 2005 that this criminal had simply been moved from Artane to another school. After release from Artane, Michael Flanagan emigrated to England. He was unable to read or write because Artane was but a school in name only. His health never recovered from Artane and he died aged 59 years. His brother Kevin was asked by the commission to seek the information from them through a solicitor. This he did but he has not yet received the information he requests. These issues still need to be resolved.

I draw the attention of the Taoiseach, the Minister of State and the House to the fact that last May was not the first time the fate of Michael Flanagan was raised on the Adjournment. As the record of the House shows, it was raised by the former independent, Deputy Peadar Cowan, previously of Clann na Poblachta, on 23 April 1954, some days after the assault occurred. It is very instructive to read the exchange between Deputy Cowan and the then Minister for Education, Mr. Seán Moylan. Deputy Cowan seemed genuinely shocked and surprised that such an incident should have taken place. He stated he had been a subscriber to the funds of Artane and that he had seen the boys, "week after week passing my house, looking exceptionally fit, well clothed and happy". He further stated he was satisfied that this was an isolated incident.

The official reply was delivered by the then Minister for Education, Mr. Seán Moylan. It is an extraordinary exhibition of the wilful blindness of the Minister and his Department in the face of the crimes being committed against children for whom they were responsible. Taking up Mr. Cowan's description, the then Minister went further and said this was an isolated incident and "in one sense what might be called an accident". Let us remember this was a 14 year old boy having his arm broken by a Christian Brother wielding the handle of a sweeping brush. The Minister continued to describe the assault as an accident and said accidents will happen "in the best regulated families". Then comes the most extraordinary statement which speaks volumes, "I cannot conceive any deliberate ill-treatment of boys by a community motivated by the ideals of its founder. I cannot conceive any sadism emanating from men who were trained to a life of sacrifice and of austerity". The Minister also attempted to excuse the assault by saying that many of the boys were sent to Artane "because of the difficulties of their character and because of a good deal of unruliness of conduct".

The Ryan report covers the case of Michael Flanagan and found that the congregation falsely claimed that the Brother responsible for the assault had been transferred from Artane as a result of the complaint and their investigation of it. The fact is that the Brother in question had requested to be transferred. The report says the action of the Brothers suggests there was a policy of concealing damaging information. The infirmary record wrongly described the injury to the boy's arm as a result of an accident, a chilling echo of what was stated in 1954 in the Dáil by the Minister for Education of the day. That Minister also claimed there was a constant system of inspection of such institutions and that "nothing of the like will happen again". Let that be a wake up call to the House today.

The Ryan report has confirmed what was known for a long time, that the inspections were too few and too limited in scope. It concludes, most damningly, that Department of Education officials were aware that abuse occurred in the schools, that the education was inadequate and that the industrial training was out-dated. As a result the Minister's promise of 1954 that it would never happen again was broken day and night for many more years afterwards in institutions throughout the State and, heaven knows, is likely continuing in 2009.

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Hear, hear.

Photo of Caoimhghín Ó CaoláinCaoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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When the victims finally began to be widely heard in the media in the 1990s the State was compelled to accept its responsibility. The then Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, issued an apology and a redress scheme and commission of inquiry was established. However, even then the deference towards the religious orders was far from dead. The deal negotiated with the religious orders by the then Minister for Education, Deputy Michael Woods, on behalf of Deputy Bertie Ahern and the Fianna Fáil and Progressive Democrat Government, was fundamentally flawed. The religious orders' contribution to the compensation scheme was capped while the State's was unlimited. That deal has now become totally discredited and the whole issue has been blown wide open again by the commission report. The former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, has attempted to defend the deal and has described its critics as "anti-church people". This is an insult to the victims and to all those who see this flawed deal for what it is. However, the former Taoiseach's intervention has made little impact, such is the public anger at what was done and such is the support for the victims' demand for justice.

All the recommendations of the commission report should be implemented. That is something we must collectively ensure and that is one of the commitments in the motion before the House. These recommendations focus on alleviating the effects of abuse on those who suffered in the past and preventing abuse of children in care today and tomorrow.

However, the Government must go further. It must address the need for truth and justice and recompense for those abused in institutions, both residential and non-residential, not covered by the Ryan report, because it does not address the whole picture. This includes the Magdalen laundries and institutions established after 1970. Justice must be done for former residents of Finglas Children's Centre, Scoil Árd Mhuire in Lusk, Trinity House, Trudder House and Madonna House. In the case of Trudder House, where many Traveller children were abused, there was one successful criminal prosecution. In the case of Madonna House, there was one prosecution and an inadequate investigation but no proper support for the victims. A former civil servant who worked in the Department of Education, tried to blow the whistle on one of these institutions but was ignored. Let it be learned from this day forward that when someone has something to say about the standard of care within the institutions under this State's control from this day forward, he or she is heeded and the information is acted upon immediately.

There needs to be full accountability and restitution from the religious orders. They need to fully accept their moral obligation to the victims. It beggars belief that up to a few days before the publication of the Ryan report, the Christian Brothers were still sending letters, written in a legal formula, to the Residential Institutions Redress Board, refusing to accept that children were abused in their institutions. The letter, from which I quote, states that [the order] "totally rejects any allegations of systematic abuse". Of course what the Ryan report clearly demonstrates, and without any possibility of challenge, is that abuse was systematic. It was happening throughout the system and the structures of the system were used to protect the abusers. If that is not systematic then what is?

After these letters emerged in the media last week, the Christian Brothers stated that their response had been, "shamefully inadequate and hurtful" and that since the publication of the Ryan report the order had accepted its culpability. One survivor spoke for many when he said that the Christian Brothers had only apologised after the publication of the Ryan report because of the strength of public opinion.

The Government should now initiate an independent international audit of all the assets of the culpable religious orders. I have made the point in this House before that this must include assets held abroad as well as their assets in Ireland. We demand the full and truthful picture. It has been claimed that many of these assets are lands and buildings currently used for educational and health care purposes. A full and open audit will test the veracity of that claim. The majority of hospitals, nursing homes, schools and other institutions in the ownership of religious orders or of Catholic dioceses, are funded by the State in any case. The bottom line is that whatever it takes to make recompense to the victims should be provided out of the assets of the culpable organisations.

The Government has to accept that the previous agreement was flawed and that it too has a moral obligation to ensure justice for the victims. The documents released yesterday to RTE, demonstrate once more the disgraceful nature of that agreement and why it must be scrapped and replaced. The whole issue of prosecution of offenders must be also addressed. Where prosecutions can be still taken, they must be taken and justice must be done.

The Government must act urgently to protect vulnerable children today. The woefully inadequate state of our child protection services has been repeatedly exposed. There are insufficient social workers and other front-line workers and support systems in place. The HSE knows of cases where children are in grave danger but the services are not in place to make the interventions required. The nightmare of child abuse is not a thing of the past; it is happening every day, including today. Most of this abuse takes place in the family home. If the services are not in place, the State today will be just as culpable as it was in the past when it conspired with the church to cover up the abuse of children.

I can only describe as grossly irresponsible the refusal of the Government to implement the first recommendation of the Monageer inquiry which was to establish an out-of-hours social work care service. A proper system must be put in place. It is disgraceful that key recommendations of the Monageer inquiry report have been censored by the Government. That report and its recommendations should be published in full, under Dáil privilege if necessary. The Ryan report documents a system of cover-up and secrecy. This should not be replicated in any way, especially in the Government's handling of a report such as Monageer which has grave implications for the safety and welfare of children today.

I conclude with this point. The separation of Church and State must be completed. In the Twenty-six Counties today, the State pays for education through capitation grants, teachers' salaries and a range of other funding. However, the majority of primary and secondary schools are not under democratic control; they are predominantly under the patronage of Catholic bishops and in the ownership of the Catholic Church. It is a legacy of the old era of ecclesiastical power and control. This must change and we must move to a democratically controlled education system, truly representative of the community, respecting the rights of people of all religions and none and totally child-centred.

1:00 pm

Photo of Barry AndrewsBarry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to share my time with Deputy Mattie McGrath.

The history of our country in the 20th century will be rewritten as a result of the Ryan commission of inquiry and its report. Things we held to be self-evident have been challenged to their core. Yesterday, survivors brought a banner to Leinster House referring to the phrase in the 1916 Proclamation that the State would resolve to cherish all the children of the nation equally. This sentiment was not considered controversial at the time and yet today it is clear that such idealism was misplaced. It is now clear that our society was ordered in a way that permitted systematic and institutional neglect and abuse of our children. Many different factors permitted this abuse to occur and to continue for many years. The idealism of the 1916 Proclamation was suffocated by undue deference to religious orders by some and indifference by others. The damage done to the lives of those who endured such abuse is apparent to us all. There will, of course, be no peace for the survivors of such abuse unless we live up to the ambitions set out in the recommendations of the Ryan report.

I was honoured to be asked by the Taoiseach to formulate a response to the recommendations of the Ryan commission report by way of an implementation plan. Before I go into the details of how I propose to do so, I will refer to an individual story that came to my attention. It concerns a lady who lives near my constituency office who herself is a survivor of abuse. Her story is very similar to many and the publication of the report was very difficult for her. She took a copy of the report to the grave of her brother and sister who also had been survivors of abuse and she buried the report in the earth in the grave to try to convince herself that they would appreciate that the report had been written. There is a great appreciation that this whole process that began ten years' ago has arrived at this conclusion. People say this is all in the past but child abuse very rarely comes to the surface or is known about until adults are in a position to complain about it. In our society in the 1990s, many people brought this to attention. The political establishment slowly but eventually accepted there was a very serious issue that had to be addressed. The ten-year process of redress and the commission followed, and we are here today, at the soonest time this could have come to our attention. We could not have had this debate in the full knowledge of what was revealed in the Ryan commission report before this day. It is not in the past. It is inevitable with child abuse that it does not come out until much later and we must bear that in mind.

The recommendations of the Ryan report have been accepted by the Government. There are specific recommendations that refer to the current child protection services in this State. When I was appointed Minister of State with responsibility for children I said that child protection would be my priority and it has so continued to be.

I wish to refer in particular to five recommendations. Recommendation No. 6 states that services should be tailored to the needs of children. Recommendation No. 9 refers to the need for better information about children and states that a database should be kept. Recommendation No. 12 deals with inspections. Recommendation No. 16 deals with continuity of care and social workers. Recommendation No. 17 refers to aftercare. These issues are central to the way I propose to present an implementation plan to Government.

Since I was appointed Minister of State with responsibility for children I have had monthly meetings with the HSE to drive a reform agenda. A number of objectives have been achieved in those 12 months, to the credit of the HSE. I refer particularly to a taskforce which will report this month. This will ensure there will be a standardisation of the method by which children at risk are assessed and referred by social work staff. At present there is a legacy from the old health boards which means we do not know exactly what is happening in child protection services in this country. That is a terrible failing. Only by standardising the service can we ensure that in the future when we deploy resources we will avoid duplication, address inefficiencies and fill the gaps that are so patently present. I look forward to the publication of the taskforce's report later this month.

Second, there will be a single appointment of an individual in the HSE with responsibility for children and families. This is the first time this has occurred in child protection in this country. It is very important this should occur and I made this case to the HSE which accepted that such a person must be appointed.

Third, a knowledge management strategy is being developed and a business plan is currently being peer reviewed. At present two computer systems are used by social workers in this country. In eight or nine local health offices, LHOs, there are no computer facilities of any kind with the result that at no time can we obtain a picture of the shortcomings which are evidently present. We hope the knowledge management strategy and the ICT proposal will address that shortcoming.

Finally, an achievement of the recent past is that there will be no recruitment embargo in respect of social workers. During recent weeks I had meetings with social workers in Dublin and in Cork and will attend other meetings in Galway and Tullamore. The purpose of those meetings was to try to speak to social workers themselves. I believe there is a problem in this country with regard to the perception of social workers, and not only among service users. We saw this last summer in the review of Children First. Service users have a very negative view of social workers but so do journalists and politicians and that is something we must address. For that reason, I propose to meet social workers face to face in town hall-type meetings. The first of those occurred last month in Dr. Steevens' Hospital where 150 social workers gathered, in their own time outside working hours and at their own expense. They expressed to me their concerns about the shortcomings that currently exist.

The problems they identified are in common with those in the UK. Following the Baby "P" case Lord Laming prepared a progress report on the protection of children in England in which he outlined some of the problems that exist in the UK. He made the point that there is a high degree of public vilification of social workers and specifically stated that "low staff morale, high caseloads, under-resourcing and inadequate training each contribute to high levels of stress and recruitment and retention difficulties". Lord Laming went on to say that public vilification of social workers has a negative effect on staff and has serious implications for the effectiveness, status and morale of the children's workforce as a whole. As a result, specific proposals have been made in the UK from which we can learn much.

I also propose to meet the National Social Work Qualifications Board to discuss the types of changes we can introduce to try to improve the type of social work service we provide. We must do a review of the type of work experience that is provided to social workers while they are in college. We must examine course content. The UK report suggested that two-thirds of graduates feel the degree prepared them "just enough" or not at all for their current role. There should be much stronger support for social workers in the first year post-qualification. I do not understand a system in which a social worker leaves college and goes straight into front line, complex difficult social work cases. They deal with the toughest families and cases and must make extremely challenging decisions. As we learned at the recent Impact conference, sometimes they make those decisions under the threat of physical violence.

These are people who have just come out of college. That is wrong. The promotion and career structure in social work in this country means that when one is promoted one goes back into the office and becomes a manager. My view is that in most professions where difficult decisions must be taken to protect children only the most qualified people are given the task of dealing with the toughest types of cases. The way we deal with social workers in this country must be addressed. Consideration should be given to addressing burn-out by looking at ways of allowing staff to take time off from hard-core work at the coal face of social work. Each social worker should have a mixture of both child protection and child welfare cases.

The second issue I wish to address is Children First. Last year there was a review of this report from which it was clear that there is an inconsistency in the implementation of Children First across the country. The question of mandatory reporting has been suggested on a number of occasions in this House. I am not attracted to mandatory reporting. In jurisdictions where it has already been introduced the result has been a very high increase in reporting but no corresponding increase in substantiated cases of child abuse. As a result of these patterns, serious consideration is being given in those jurisdictions to reversing or adapting the policy. In those countries many social workers spend much of their time processing referrals that have no grounding in fact. Sometimes referrals are considered defensive by authorities in order to avoid the penalty for failure to report. However, I accept that changes must be made in respect of Children First. Whether this means putting it on a statutory footing, trying to improve training or improving the implementation across different agencies must be considered.

One point that comes up all the time in the way we try to deal with children is the concept of joint or inter-agency working and intergovernmental responses. In December 2007 the Office of the Minister with Responsibility for Children published the agenda for children's services. This set down some key questions for Departments to try to make sure they were focusing on the protection of children and providing better services for them. It challenged people to put children at the centre of services rather than have services in which we hoped children might fit. Services should be able to reach out to each other so that children do not fall through the gaps. In my constituency work I come across this all the time. I have seen it at a more serious level in the failure of different agencies to talk to and work with each other.

Teachers, gardaí, the local authorities, the HSE, the legal profession and non-governmental organisations all have a role in this regard. This point is mentioned in every review of child protection in this country. We need to have better inter-agency work and better joint working. We need agencies to talk to each other, but this is one of the most difficult things to achieve. Therefore, we must wonder if there is a better way to ensure this is achieved. Perhaps we should consider requiring that agencies work together rather than express it as an aspiration.

We have children's services committees in four local authority areas in Ireland and these are working extremely well. They bring together the agencies to which I have referred. The one in Limerick, for example, parallels the regeneration body and provides knowledge of children. When a primary school presents in junior infants, a primary school teacher can already tell if that child faces a life of addiction, of complex home problems or of contact with the criminal justice system. Teachers can tell that from a very early age, yet we do not have the reaching out of services among the different agencies. This is a big challenge and one of the proposals I hope to be able to bring to Government is a response to how we will improve this in the immediate future.

Aftercare is another issue I would like to mention. The United Kingdom has provided evidence which shows that many people who become involved in the criminal justice system have a care history - up to two thirds of them. This allows only one conclusion - that the care system does not work. This is a serious shortcoming and must be addressed. Aftercare in Ireland is addressed on a statutory basis by section 45 of the Child Care Act 1991. I have received many submissions, including from Focus Ireland, that suggest aftercare should be put on a mandatory basis so that wherever a need is identified, it will be met. This has major resource implications. All of these considerations will help form part of the response I propose to put to Government.

I thank the Survivors of Child Abuse for the presentations and oral submissions to me over the past few weeks. It has been a very difficult time for them, but they have conducted themselves with great dignity. They have articulated, on behalf of their many members, the true suffering and pain they have had to endure. My obligation is to ensure the Ryan report was not done in vain. Their legacy will be what significant improvements we can make for the children of today and the future.

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Chair for the opportunity to contribute to this debate and empathise with the thousands of people who turned out to visit the Dáil yesterday.

Prevailing conditions increased the likelihood of abuse in the years prior to and during the period covered by the Ryan report. Some of the causes of abuse still exist; that must change. Intervention at causal level is seriously needed. There was a lack of information on the make-up of humans and on how our brains and organisms develop. Misinformation was the norm. What really drives humans was not understood until recently. Even in the past 50 years, improvements in understanding have moved towards a new place in the history of such knowledge.

In the past, punishment, shaming, and practices likely to result in widespread abuse were the norm. Practices crystallised in the early 1500s as the way to avoid abuse remained in place, yet they were doomed to fail. During all that time, there was a serious lack of understanding as to the emotional needs of children and a shortfall in knowledge as to the damage caused by poor or defective early emotional development. These deficiencies carried over into adulthood. Thus, even in adulthood, systematic abuse of young persons was acceptable, if not the norm. For example, it was considered OK to shout at and hit a defenceless child, but it was illegal to punch a six-foot boxer on the street. Similar treatment of a grown up was illegal. The ash plant was well worn as it became a tool of therapeutic destruction that was systematic and normalised. The leather strap was manufactured; it did not merely just arrive. Until a few years ago, a punishment tool hung in a store and all attempts to get it taken down met with rebuff. Abuse was normalised.

In the past there was a suppression of our natural sensuality by shaming, culminating in sensuality being equated with sexuality. Religious rules diverted attention from the serious damage that abuse caused and, instead, focused attention on sin. Thus generations grew up trying not to damage an indestructible God rather than loving humanity. Celibacy was enforced, punishment and shaming were in vogue and abusive behaviours were driven underground. They emerged in institutions and in the fences, lay-bys, back rooms and hidden places. There they grew, fermented and exploded, so that was done openly in the 1550s was now under cover. The by-product was that these locations became a training ground and our people learned about it.

Celibacy was enforced, thus demeaning women, procreation and the evolved or created sensuality necessary for our survival, even the sensuality needed to know that we hurt. This was an abusive decision which could qualify as a serious human rights violation. It flew in the face of the desirability of a growth facilitating relationship, a fact now accepted by almost all of humanity. Thus growth was denied to priests. Growth invariably occurs in a deep relationship. Priests and brothers were expected to be growth facilitators, despite having been themselves separated from deep, loving, growth-facilitating relationships. Rational thinking was turned upside down and replaced by patterned behaviour, as if we were computers. Women were barred from the ministries and forgiven for the activity of procreation, thus tainting the most natural and necessary of our actions.

Sexual abuse was normalised, sin was forgiven, and we were abused again. Young people were so exposed to abuse that by the time they reached their workplaces, they were highly skilled abusers, hiding from God and man and yet not exactly knowing why. The barrier or only brake to abuse in existence was fear of God. Fear is, of course, the direct polar opposite to love and care of humanity. In the case of our young people, abuse was guaranteed to occur.

Where fear is the obstacle, love is absent. It is the care and love we might have for each other that establishes levels of abuse, not fear. Abuse was so common that it acquired normality status. While this training ground was the initiation for all of us to our interaction with humans, unfortunately it fermented further in the seminaries and centres where larger numbers gathered. We know now that numbers have an effect on crime and abuse.

In those times, classism was rife; poor children went to institutions and the rich went elsewhere. Classism was such that it was all right to abuse the poor. Brothers came from the poor and were likely to suffer abuse, if not already abused. Abusers are, and were frequently, persons who were abused themselves. Abuse was normalised. If one's parents and elders abused, then God was not even a player in the field. This caused a contradiction on the child's perception screen. Adults said that God was to be "feared" and "loved", two words that do not belong in the one sentence with God. Worse than that, the perception was that if adults were abusing, that must be OK with God. This would be a fair enough crude summary of the dilemma facing a young person. However, young persons generally became adults and by then they were able to sit with the contradiction: adults are right, adults abuse; thus, God must be wrong. Therefore, abuse seemed all right.

While this misinformation and inaccurate policy was in motion, children came to be assessed through opaque lenses. It was normal to ask "What is wrong with that child?", but the question should have been a bifocal one. It should have asked what was wrong with the system and what were the early developmental deficiencies or influences on the child. It should have asked what effect these had on the specific child. Similarly, it also became popular to label children with disorders whereas new information abounded as to the cause of behaviours. Thus, the number of recorded disorders might well have reduced, but instead it was increased and now amounts to over 300. Perhaps they should have gone to Specsavers.

Children became adults with developmental deprivations which were of a character as to affect their interaction with other humans. There was no method to assess this, even as some of these adults entered institutions as carers. When we then employed or used staff who had either been abused and traumatised, or were already abusing, we did not have an adequate or sufficiently informed basis for assessment. Nor is there a comprehensive method now. Garda clearance does not cover the actual need. It covers criminal behaviours and the like but it misses early deprivations, traumas and abuses that render the person, perhaps, unsuitable. We need it now.

Discrimination against children was systematic. Biological children remain supported for life whereas foster children were and are thrown to the storms at a young age. That State policy was and is a serious human rights violation. The middle class struggled, the poor died and their children, perhaps already abused by adults, went to institutions. Let us be caringly direct. The poor children are poor but they also suffer discrimination and that has been State policy, since we signed the Treaty to this day.

Education of our deserving parents in terms of favourable and significant discoveries was not in tandem with them. Thus, the effect of early effective interaction was inadequately presented and not employed in its needed form. We needed to prioritise our future generation. Parents deserved the newest information and help. The Judiciary and the educational systems needed it and they need it now more than ever. It is not enough to have any system based on outdated knowledge.

Sexual discrimination and abuse of women was rife and undeniable evidence as to sexual orientations was abused. All this and more contributed to the abuse in the institutions. Males were oppressed in that they were forced to fight. Women were oppressed. Boys were told not to cry. Women were told to love, a desirable objective, but love is not found by force. Care of our people is separated from the idea of love and this is systematic. Love has good definitions but they were thrown to the winds with the bath water. The child went with it. Care systems forbade the use of the word "love".

Then and now, children were not listened to. Defenceless children had their right to be heard silenced. Yet it is the child who calls to the mother or father and makes a parent of a person. When those children had no longer a mother or father to plea to and engage with in a necessary growth facilitating manner, they were sent to institutions, where we, as a nation, funded as little as one staff to perhaps 30 children. Sometimes one staff member dealt with 100 children. That was a result of our lack of knowledge as to need and how to develop. It was a cause of significant suffering and developmental damage. We pay the price of that in crime.

Thus, the very voice and plea that is now known to be so important was oppressed. It is a serious oppression. The right to a co-creative interaction between parent and child was denied. Both parent and child are victims of the one blow even if landed in innocence and ignorance. The right to co-creative developmental interaction was severed even between child and carer.

It is so significant and sacred to note that each person who talks of their journey can link their ability to survive and to love to some loving act they experienced. Some say that of the institutions. It may be said that the loving kind deed for some of these children saved them and us from worse.

Mothers and infants were oppressed particularly in the past. We hear that children and mothers and families were protected from the poverty and shame by not being allowed to be born. To kill in desperation the newborn must have been horrific and yet that is what we inflicted upon mothers when we criminalised and Satanised births out of wedlock. Children were called horrible names, and we only fell short of stoning single mothers. They are still somewhat oppressed and a rational approach has not been employed. Rather it is blowing in the storms, by default.

Given the serious influences operating in the days past, we now need to address what to do for the future. There is need to take a very serious look at some glaring policy options. To avoid in the future what is now occurring to an alarming extent and what occurred as set out in the Ryan report we need to integrate new findings. Findings and new information will be much concerned with the decade of the brain discoveries and phenomenal discoveries as to the influences on human development. This will have influence on our educational and crime policies and will affect our approach to policies to address the findings of the Ryan report.

There is one specific concern that we will need to address with integrity. It is now well known that persons who were subject to abuse are in need of significant intervention and therapy. This is needed to address the damage caused but also to satisfactorily address the risk of their having seen abuse as normal, and thereby being a risk. It is also known that persons who were adjacent to, heard, or witnessed the abuse of others are affected and are likely to suffer greater consequences than the direct recipient of the abuse. This is significant information as it means that we have to thoroughly assess the totality of the damage caused by the abuse, and its current and future risk to both the persons abused to date and to the general population. We have a serious obligation to asses this in the most thorough way to break parts of the cycle of abusive normalisation. As the abuse in general and as early emotional developmental influences will have had other serious affects there is a need to assess the overall damage. We will have to treat the damaged and we will have to compensate them. There will need to be a cut-off point somewhere.

The question will loom and it will be educational, namely, what caused the abuse and will we prevent it now? This presents a current dilemma in terms of how to contain the problem and prevent it, in the knowledge that punishment, shaming and fear are more causal than curative. There will be a way forward that will bring containment with accompanying treatment, coupled with the correct approaches in all causal areas.

We need to get with it and integrate new information into our policies. It is not enough simply to react. President Obama may well be right when he says, "Yes we can" or "Is féidir linn". I say it differently. We can listen. If we do, only then can we say "Yes, we can".

Photo of Alan ShatterAlan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Like other Members, I thank the Ryan commission and Mr. Justice Ryan for the report, which clearly vindicates the claims made over so many years by those who found themselves, at a young age, in residential institutions in this State and who were subjected to barbaric, inhuman treatment which no child, in any country, should ever experience. We could describe what occurred in our residential institutions as the systemic torture of children.

Unlike other Members, I cannot say the revelations in the Ryan commission report came as a surprise to me. I should make a declaration of interest. A partner in my own law firm, Mr. Tim O'Sullivan, has represented more than 100 victims of abuse before the Redress Board. I am aware of many of the experiences victims had, from my meetings with some and from being present at meetings they held many years ago when they were crying out for recognition and help. My firm has experienced how the church and religious congregations dealt with victims of sexual and physical abuse and sought, until very recently, to deny all responsibility, as well as the credibility of those who made claims.

In view of my position as a lawyer, I have a duty of confidentiality to clients. However, certain individuals have shown great courage, publicly told their story and laid the foundation for many other people to come forward to explain what happened to them. One of those was Mr. Andrew Madden, who was represented in the early 1990s by the firm of which I am a partner. Mr. Madden claimed he had been sexually assaulted as an altar boy by a priest named Ivan Payne. Court proceedings were taken on his behalf. He was the first individual to take a civil action against an alleged perpetrator of clerical abuse in this country. He also took an action against the then Archbishop of Dublin. Proceedings were issued by Mr. Andrew Madden and he subsequently told his story and the outcome of the proceedings publicly. That is why I feel at liberty to make reference to them.

Mr. Madden's experience is a microcosm of that of so many people. With great courage, he went to the courts. His claims were heavily resisted but they were ultimately settled outside the door of the court. I am not breaching confidence by stating that under a confidentiality clause he was not permitted to publicly state the outcome of his proceedings or the compensation he was paid. However, Andrew Madden breached this clause. As his lawyers, we had to advise him that he had to abide by the clause but he went to the newspapers because he believed that if he remained silent, others who had been the victims of abuse would never be told. As their stories were becoming known, he hoped he would give them the courage to come forward and, more important, that by going public he would ensure action that had not previously been taken would be taken by the State and church authorities and children would be protected who might otherwise find themselves the victims of abuse.

What was learned from Andrew Madden's case was that once he came forward, a number of other men came forward who, as altar boys, had been abused by Ivan Payne. It was only through Andrew Madden going public that Ivan Payne was prosecuted through the courts by the Garda Síochána and Director of Public Prosecutions and sentenced to terms of imprisonment.

What was extraordinary about the case was that the abuse suffered by Andrew Madden had been reported when he was a child and Ivan Payne, as a priest, had been moved by the Archbishop of Dublin from one parish to another and proceeded to abuse altar boys in two different parishes. When the church realised he could not be left to deal with altar boys he found himself in a different position. By sheer coincidence, at the time our firm was representing Andrew Madden, I was representing a young woman who was seeking to have a church annulment from the marriage tribunal in Drumcondra. She went to have a private interview in the tribunal and when I subsequently asked who had interviewed her, I learned to my astonishment that Ivan Payne, the person who had been transferred out of two parishes and had been abusing altar boys, was operating in the marriage tribunal in Drumcondra, adjacent to Archbishop's House, where he had engaged in conversations with men and women seeking annulments, some of which conversations required that they discuss with him the intimate details of their married lives. I found that extraordinary.

Photo of Kathleen LynchKathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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I apologise for interrupting the Deputy.

Photo of Alan ShatterAlan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I am moving on from referring to the case.

Photo of Kathleen LynchKathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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The Deputy misunderstands. He may conclude his contribution when the sitting resumes.

Sitting suspended at 1.35 p.m. and resumed at 2 p.m.

Sitting suspended.