Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It is good that the Taoiseach apologised. However, he apologised on behalf of the State and everyone within it. We were all, therefore, encompassed by his apology. To claim that the apology was made on behalf of the Government is to undermine its significance. Before we made our first communion, we were informed that saying one was sorry without being prepared to take the necessary steps was fairly meaningless. What we must consider is not whether mistakes were made — of course they were made — but whether people were culpable for those mistakes and whether evidence which is incontrovertible suggests that other agendas were being pursued.

I must reiterate something I said when the legislation relating to the Laffoy commission passed through the House. What emerges from this and subsequent reports ought to give salutary warning to people who lament the loss of the good old days. These were the good old days for thousands of young people and memories of them are not pleasant ones to have. We locked children up in dreadful conditions for a variety of reasons. Few of these were reasons for which the children themselves could be made culpable.

As we acknowledge the enormity of what was done to children in that awful period, the phrase used by the Minister of State that: "It was and still is the view of Government that to allow [in other words the Government is claiming the right not to allow the Commission to do things] the commission to continue with the hearing of over 1,700 individual cases without any thought to the huge legal bill being incurred would not have been in the interest of either the survivors themselves or society." If there was a Minister of State present who had the courtesy to listen——