Sheila Terry (Fine Gael)

I support Senators Brian Hayes and Ryan in calling for this important issue to be debated in this House today. We are all extremely concerned about the ramifications of the recent court judgments for the young people of this country. When I listened to the radio yesterday afternoon and this morning, I sensed the concern, anger and fear of parents and the other law-abiding citizens of this State. They are angry that their legislators — all of us here, especially the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform — allowed this to happen. We need to have faith in ourselves as legislators. In particular, we need to have faith in the Minister, Deputy McDowell, who always seems to claim to have knowledge of everything but has let us down in this instance. The Government has let the people of this country down by failing to foresee what was about to happen on foot of the Supreme Court decision last week. We now know that it should have been aware of the problems which existed. One has to question whether it was aware of them but decided instead to bury its head in the sand. I fully support those who have called on the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to come to this House this afternoon to outline exactly how we arrived at this stage, to state whether it is possible to try to alleviate the problems we face today and to explain how the children of this country will be protected.