Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I can give the House chapter and verse and name the people who stood in the way of the Stay Safe programme, mandatory reporting, sexual education programmes in schools and I could go on. These people did the same here in education in some of the high offices of State and managed to carry the day. They have escaped in the course of these reports and I certainly believe they have much to answer for. There are people in this and the other House who can back up what I am saying.

A former Minister for Education, Deputy Mary O'Rourke, sat in a room with me when we saw them at their worst, having a go at us on the Stay Safe programme, and that is 25 years ago. Inside this House more than 20 years ago we raised issues concerning mandatory reporting after Kilkenny, Mayo, etc. to ensure teachers, social workers and gardaí would have to report, but it never happened. All these things ended up in culs-de-sac when they were reported. The information was to be found in many places and yet it never flowed out of those culs-de-sac. Excuse me if I have a curl in my lip when I think again about all that spurious, specious argumentation being put about by these groups about destroying the innocence of young people at a time when they were being destroyed and wrecked and their lives, not just their childhood, was being taken from them in these institutions.

We have a great deal to answer for. I would like this investigation to go further to see where these influences were brought to bear on the Department of Education and Science, other Departments, Governments, media and on the church to ensure this thing was never dealt with when it should have been.