Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

We are discussing a difficult and painful issue, but we should at least give ourselves credit that we have the courage to address such an issue openly without fear or favour. In Northern Ireland, the Kincora scandal was a sort of hugger-mugger security investigation that was never properly aired. Admittedly, that was 20 years ago. Other types of residential institutions, catering more perhaps for the privileged than the underprivileged, boarding schools, public schools etc., have not perhaps even begun to confront the fairly endemic physical, not to mention, sexual abuse that took place in some of them. I am not only referring to institutions in this country but to those across the water. In the midst of all the pain this is causing, we should at least give ourselves some credit for the fact that we are trying, perhaps imperfectly and stumbling along the way, to address this issue, in as honest and as principled a way as we can, to try to make up to the victims for some of what happened in the best way possible.

In the contribution of Senator Ó Murchú there has been some debate about the nature of society a generation or more ago. On the whole I would be more an admirer than a critic of what the Roman Catholic Church and various congregations did in terms of providing a range of social services. The key to such provision was that they provided the services at very much less than full cost in the sense that the people providing them were not paid in the way a secular person might have had to be. There was an ideal – it seems far removed now but there was some nobility about it – of establishing a model Catholic democracy here in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. As always, power considerations were intermingled with idealism, and it is very difficult sometimes to unpick the different factors. In regard to the type of society we are talking about, which was very different from society today and had very different norms, we need to separate the habit of corporal punishment from severe physical and sexual abuse, which left more lasting marks. That society, culture and administration were more authoritarian in character, much more so than today, and more secretive. It was not the case that problems were never dealt with when they arose; in many cases they were dealt with effectively, but that would have been done mostly without publicity. I am sure we are talking about a minority of abusers and abuse.

This problem has been with us a long time. One need only refer to characters in literature such as Tom Jones, the novels of Dickens and Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is only in this generation that we have begun to tackle the issue in a way that hopefully will prevent more such abuse occurring, but there are other influences, to which Senator Ó Murchú referred, of a much more secular kind. Abuse of children that is secular in nature is a problem, for example, in a certain sporting context, to which reference was made.

The issues relating to the Laffoy commission – I regret Ms Justice Laffoy's resignation – raise wider matters relating to the tribunal method of dealing with and investigating problems, particularly when there is a large number of cases involved. We must reflect on this. Tribunals will be necessary in certain instances in the future as they have been in the past, but there is a need to think ahead and to draw their method of operation and terms of reference reasonably tightly in order that their work can be completed within a reasonable time. I accept that the work of some tribunals may take two or three years, but it is not acceptable, as seems to be the case with a number of the current tribunals, that they continue indefinitely with no end in sight. That does not create justice or closure for anybody. I hope that under the review that is currently taking place and having regard to the new chairman, ways will be sought to try to do this work within a reasonable and finite period.