Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State for his presentation. We in Fine Gael are delighted to be able to support the work of the commission and the extension of time required to complete the report.

This episode of child abuse, which went on for years in the 20th century in our country, is regrettable. It went on in our institutions and involved people in positions of authority. My concern is that we would now examine what we have in place to safeguard children of the present and future. We are concerned that the commission should report on the past — the report should be published as early as possible — but we must also think of today and tomorrow.

We must protect and monitor children in institutions and schools working with those in positions of trust. Vetting must be more comprehensive and we must not fail again. In that regard I will focus in particular on the Children First guidelines. As the Minister of State rightly said, the commission provides for two committees, which is a very good brief, namely, the confidential committee and the investigative committee. The confidential committee has heard from 1,090 victims of child abuse. We need to know from the report if those victims were satisfied with that process because that is the very least we owe them. Society owes a debt to victims of child abuse. They have been let down by the very institutions set up in the State to take care of them.

Regarding the full hearings for 252 people, my hunch is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. I am sure many more people suffered from child abuse than those who had the courage to come forward. We know from recent statistics that one in four were and are victims of child abuse. That is a staggering figure. A recent Irish National Teachers' Organisation report shows that 25% of all teachers in the Republic have made a complaint of concern about either neglect or sexual, physical or emotional abuse. That is the range we are looking at with the Children First guidelines.

The Minister of State said he needed a projected €45 million to €55 million to enable the commission complete its work by the end of 2009. Will he clarify when responding if those moneys will be forthcoming from the Government? I ask that question given the reneging on promises in other areas. This commission is welcome, however, for the sake of truth and we must move on that.

Last night I spoke to a teacher who was quite formidable in that she was one of the people involved in the rollout of the Children First guidelines. She was charged with that responsibility on behalf of the State and the Department of Education and Science. The national guidelines were written for all professionals involved with children — teachers, nurses, gardaí, etc. Teachers' only duty is to report to what is called the designated liaison person or the deputy designated liaison person in their schools their concerns or suspicions that some form of child abuse may be taking place. Generally, the liaison person is a senior member of staff; in many cases it is the principal but not necessarily so. Each of those groups issued a further set of guidelines giving guidance to their staff in conjunction with the Children First national set of guidelines.

I have a number of concerns, the first of which is that the guidelines are not mandatory. That makes one think differently about one's work. It would be a major decision for our nation to have mandatory guidelines and the next step would be to have a debate on whether to make the Children First guidelines mandatory.

I did my Master's degree in education in Connecticut, in the United States. At that time I was teaching in New York State. I was trained in the area of child protection, as part of that Master's programme, in a way that the guidelines were mandatory. I had a mandatory responsibility to report any suspicion or evidence I had of neglect. When I returned to the school in New York where I was teaching — this was 15 years ago — that awareness and training made me view differently the children in my class. I felt fearful that I might neglect some form of abuse, and cases of neglect were reported by me and other colleagues who did that course as a result of that heightened awareness.

We do not have that type of training here yet but it must happen in a broader sense in terms of whether we should move down the mandatory route. Last night I spoke to my colleague who was involved in the rollout of the Children First guidelines. She believes schools are concerned because the school is the only group that would see the family every day they may have reported——