Liam Fitzgerald (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I am delighted to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate on the third interim report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. I am disappointed, having listened to the debate on this matter in the other House last night, to hear the Opposition here trump up various allegations, accusations and insinuations against the Minister for Education and Science and his Department, all bordering on the insidious. None of them is proven and there is no detailed reference to evidence of any kind. The upshot of these muddled and confusing allegations is that the Minister should resign.

I cast my mind back to last October when the Opposition was shouting from the roof tops that functions of the redress board were compromising victims' rights. They confused and, I suggest, deliberately muddled the board's role vis-À-vis victims' rights to go to the courts. They then attacked the investigation committee in the same way. It is the Opposition, not the Minister, who is in denial of the obvious and glaring difficulties which pertained to the investigation committee at that time. Those wild, unfounded and over-the-top allegations have not succeeded and the Opposition is now calling on the Minister to resign or to step aside and to allow sponsorship of the commission to be handed over to another Department. No evidence has been put forward to justify that assertion.