Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

The country is reeling since yesterday from the revelations contained in the Ryan report. It is hard to look at the pictures in The Irish Times today of the institutions in question and to read and listen to the words of the victims. If it is hard for us to listen one can only imagine what it was like to experience the physical and sexual abuse, the ongoing trauma and the inability to escape from it. People were kept as prisoners and there was a complete failure by the State and everybody to put children's rights to the front. As all reports today state, there was endemic physical and sexual abuse. It was totally horrific.

One is left speechless at the sheer horror of what these many hundreds of Irish children endured over a very long period. The protection of abusers seems to have been at the heart of what was going on. One can take any page from the report, as a number of radio programmes did yesterday, and quote from it:

Sexual abuse was endemic in the boys' institutions . . . physical abuse was common . . .the Department of Education failed in its duty again and again . . . the reformatory and industrial schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and the fear of such punishment.

I ask that the Ryan report be put down for debate at the earliest possible opportunity. What is really important is that it has been published and we can hear these voices through the report. Many legal actions were taken to prevent publication of the report in the course of its ten years. There is still a considerable level of denial and resistance and a refusal to acknowledge what took place. On the website of the commission we can see the legal attempts and delays which were put forward to prevent this from emerging. When the banks recently took the types of decisions they did and the public was outraged, there were calls for the Garda to go in, and we saw a police raid, as it were. What is documented in the report must be followed up by the Garda, the State and everyone in the most rigorous manner. I remind the House that two weeks ago the Seanad discussed the fact that the Ombudsman for Children could not get the details she wanted from the HSE. Yesterday, we spoke about 254 children who were in adult mental health institutions instead of getting the type of care they needed. We talked about the Monageer report with its blacked out recommendations, and this was just in recent weeks.

There are continuities in the protection of children in this country and there is still denial of the need to put children's rights at the centre. Until that situation changes, children will continue to be abused. This was abuse on an horrific scale in a wide range of settings. It was not just about isolated institutions in Letterfrack and Artane. The confidential report says regarding adults who spoke about their abuse as children that it was widespread, occurred in 161 settings, in primary and secondary schools, hospitals and foster care, and involved volunteers visiting those institutions.

While we do not have time on the Order of Business to discuss the many issues in the report, there are issues about justice and implementing the recommendations. When a Minister comes to this House next week to discuss this report, we should have a Cabinet response.