Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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1. To ask the Taoiseach if he will provide a list of the State apologies issued by Taoisigh in each of the past ten years, and to date in 2023. [42621/23]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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2. To ask the Taoiseach if he will provide a list of the State apologies issued by Taoisigh in each of the past ten years, and to date in 2023. [43876/23]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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3. To ask the Taoiseach if he will provide a list of the State apologies issued by Taoisigh in each of the past ten years, and to date in 2023. [43880/23]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive, together.

In the last ten years or so, apologies have been issued in the Dáil by various Taoisigh on behalf of the State. In February 2013, the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, issued an apology on behalf of the Government in Dáil Éireann to women who were resident in the Magdalen laundries for the hurt done to them and for any stigma and trauma experienced by reason of their residence in those institutions. The Government followed up on this through the establishment of the Magdalen restorative justice ex gratiascheme, as recommended by Mr. Justice John Quirke, and by ensuring the recommendations of the Ombudsman’s report of November 2017 on the operation of the scheme are fully implemented.

On 22 October 2019, as Taoiseach, I issued an apology in the Dáil on behalf of the State to the women and their loved ones affected by issues relating to the CervicalCheck screening programme. While screening cannot prevent all cases of cervical cancer, the failures experienced by the women concerned were acknowledged. The apology came on foot of Dr. Gabriel Scally’s scoping inquiry into CervicalCheck. Since then, the Government has been committed to learning lessons and making positive progress in this regard. All 170 actions of the implementation plan arising from the Scally report are now completed. This work included developing an updated reporting structure for the national screening services within the HSE. Efforts arising from Dr Scally”s inquiry have enabled improved governance, strengthened reporting lines and, most importantly, helped to create a more patient-centred environment within the CervicalCheck programme. In his final progress report published last November, Dr Scally acknowledged the progress that has been achieved. The Government is very much aware that the issues in CervicalCheck in 2018 led to a severe loss of trust in our screening system, but we are working to rebuild this by working with patients and patient advocates to improve and develop services across all screening programmes, including CervicalCheck.

On 13 January 2022, the then Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, issued a formal apology for the hurt experienced by many former residents of mother and baby institutions and county homes. He apologised for the profound generational wrong visited upon Irish mothers and their children who spent time in mother and baby homes, institutions, or county homes and for the shame and stigma to which they were subjected. As part of that apology it was acknowledged that the State had failed in its duty of care to the mothers and children who spent there. Since January 2021, work has been advanced by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, on restorative action for survivors and former residents of these institutions through the action plan for survivors and former residents of mother and baby homes and county home institutions, which commits to 22 actions in total.

In addition to this, in June 2018, on the 25th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexual acts, I moved an historic all-party motion in the Dáil. As part of this, a sincere apology was offered to those affected by the criminalisation of homosexual acts in Ireland and the hurt and the harm caused by this legislation was acknowledged by the House. The Government continues to advocate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, LGBT, community in Ireland and abroad, and to advance the rights of those most at risk of being marginalised, including through a review of the functioning and effectiveness of the Equality Acts, which is currently under way.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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At the Aontú Ard-Fheis in recent weeks, a motion was passed calling for a State apology for the Travelling community and for the systematic way in which governments discriminated against it. Basically, this country told Travelling people that they could only be accepted and included in society if they ceased being Travellers. Governments did this by way of legislation such as the Roads Acts and the Housing Acts, as well as the Commission on Itinerancy and so on. It was a blatant attempt to clamp down on an ethnic minority in our country and to make their way of life impossible for them. The State has never apologised for this. Too often in my role as a politician, I experience situations where I am talking to people and they whisper to me that they are a Traveller. The reason they whisper is because they are too ashamed to say it out loud. I know of a married person whose spouse did not know they were a Traveller when they got married. It is heartbreaking to see, not to mention the demise of much of the Traveller culture such as the Cant language. Will the Taoiseach issue a State apology to the Travelling community for the dehumanising way in which Governments have treated them and the long-lasting effect this has had on this ethnic minority in the decades since?

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Taoiseach mentioned the State apology to mothers and children who went through the mother and baby home institutions, but the fact is that approximately 24,000 people who went through those institutions as children were excluded from the redress scheme. The redress scheme is still not open for applications, which is pretty incredible given the age of many of these people. The exclusion of people on the very arbitrary grounds that they did not spend more than six months in a mother and baby home was a really shocking and terrible decision. A lovely woman called Susan, who comes into my clinic regularly, has been campaigning on this. She is an adoptee and was in a mother and baby home. She thinks she probably will be entitled to redress because she thinks she was there for more than six months, although there is not a lot of consistency in the information in the various documents she is getting from the different people to whom she can apply for documents. However, she feels she is letting down others by taking up the redress when so many others were excluded. She rightly identifies, as other people and I have said to the Taoiseach, that the length of time spent in these institutions does not take into account the trauma of mothers and children who were forcibly separated. The fundamental wrong that was done to children is that they were forcibly separated from their mothers. Susan is so upset about all of this. She talks about only existing on paperwork and never being able to trust the Government ever again; I could go on. Even at this late stage, the Government should recognise that all of those who were forcibly separated from their mothers should be entitled to the redress and indeed, that the redress scheme should be opened as a matter of urgency.

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

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

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies for their questions. Deputy Tóibín's question related to the possibility of a State apology to the Traveller community. He spoke about the attempt for decades to assimilate the Traveller community, which was wrong and should not have happened. I recall that under the Government led by Enda Kenny, and with a lot of leadership from the Minister of State at the time, Deputy Stanton, we as a State recognised Traveller ethnicity. This was the right thing to do.

I know from being involved in State apologies in the past that any apology has to be carefully considered. First of all it has to be adequate because if it is not adequate it is not accepted. It has to be authentic. We can only apologise for things that definitely happened, for obvious reasons. Beyond this, it needs to be followed up with action. It cannot just be an apology and that is the end of it. I will certainly be happy to engage with the Traveller organisations on the matter. I have met them on a number of occasions. I do not think it has ever been raised as an issue but that is not to say it is not an issue. It is something I will follow up with those organisations.

On the issue of the mother and baby institutions payment scheme, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has explained, as have I in the House on many occasions, the reasons for the criteria. In terms of the timeline, the establishment of the mother and baby institutions payment scheme is an important commitment to the Government's response to the final report. In July the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act was signed into law.

Work is now under way in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to progress the scheme and the structures needed for a scheme of this size. This includes appointing a chief deciding officer and staff, establishing an online application system, rolling out trauma-informed training for the staff and ensuring that all necessary communications, information and application forms for applicants are in place in hard copy and electronic form. The Department informs me it will be a number of months before this work has concluded and the scheme can be open to applications.

With regard to the issue of sexual abuse at St. John's Ambulance I am aware of the report and some of the issues in it. St John's Ambulance is not a public body and we do not appoint the board. The Government has limited influence in terms of what it can do. It does receive some State funding. I am not sure whether this is continuing. I can certainly check it out. I will have to ask the Minister to come back to Deputy Murphy to see whether there is more that we can do to encourage the organisation to do what is right, not only by people who were harmed in the past but also for the future of the organisation itself.