Ann Ormonde (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House to listen to our contributions on this awful subject. I also welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. It was heartbreaking to read the details of the savage abuse meted out to defenceless children who had been in the organisations' care for years and to whose assistance no one came. They were hidden, ignored, rejected and denied simple rights. The abusers took advantage of the children's vulnerability. Apathy reigned and nothing was done until the abused acted.

The report is compelling. One must read it, even though it is stomach churning. I can only take so much of it before having to put it down again. It is too disturbing. The religious orders are debased and have a long journey ahead of them if they are to recover. The trust and confidence in the orders have gone. They have given an apology, but the first lesson they must learn is that words are cheap.

The "Questions & Answers" programme was disturbing, and listening to Michael O'Brien was difficult. However, I am glad his story came out on the programme because it recognised the torture those children went through. Nothing will ever make up for lost childhoods and family lives, the inability to love and be loved, the lack of education and decades of unrecognised abuse, but we have all seen it now.

Having said all that, having been a boarder for five years and with an aunt who was a nun, I must spare a thought for the good ones, namely, the thousands of honourable and decent brothers and nuns who are being tarred with the same brush as the abusers. Those who have brought about this debasement of Ireland must be brought to justice.

The Government can show its commitment to the children by implementing the report's recommendations. Attention has been centred on the 2002 agreement. There is no option but to revisit it, although I do not know how. I am glad the Taoiseach and our two leading religious individuals, Cardinal Brady and Archbishop Martin, have made their criticisms known and stated there is no going back, but where will we go from here? It was a dark age in society.

As legislators, we will play our part. The lessons are stark, awful and eerie, but we must acknowledge the failures of the State and the congregations in terms of the system, policies, management and administration.

Where do we go from here? I welcomed yesterday's special meeting and I am glad that a process has started. We must respond to the abuses outlined in the report. I welcome that the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, has been authorised to analyse the current situation, produce a plan for implementation and put resources in place. The timespan for implementation is the key to this.

The recommendations must be analysed. I have not read them all but I have extracted a few. They refer to providing counselling and education services. I have become allergic to the word "counselling". I do not like it. We do not want an approach where a counsellor is provided for these people who have suffered such traumatic abuse who asks them whether they would like to tell him or her all about themselves.

There should be an infrastructure of professional people, starting with public health nurses, teachers at pre-primary level and social welfare personnel, who will also be qualified. All these people should also be qualified counsellors because one cannot isolate the issue. There has to be a global approach when dealing with this colossal problem. The public health nurse is the key person because he or she is in the family home from the day a child is born. He or she visits every family and has a nose for knowing what is going on in any part or area of society. Such people should be given a key role, along with educationalists. There must be co-ordination between Departments. Independent personnel should make unannounced investigations to look at and assess situations at any given time.

These are simple, small measures, but one can get it right by having three or four main points. There are more than 20 very good recommendations in the report. I have no difficulty with them, but three or four of them should be set out which will determine the course of action from the time a child is born in terms of family background and back-up services.

One should pick up what is happening. Abuse will not go away; it is a part of life. While we should be aware of that, we must stamp it out none the less. I am glad the congregations have closed these reformatory schools because we should no longer give them a role. We should not have given a role to people who had no training and should never have been in the orders. They should not have been out in society. I do not know why they went into such congregations in the first place. Perhaps it was because in the past one's job was to become a Christian Brother or whatever. Perhaps that was the way it was. That said, such people had no training or background and frustration was coming out of every part of their body.

All that must go. We must have trained people who are balanced. The people we are talking about were not balanced. It is extraordinary we had such people around us in society. They should have been banned from society. I am ashamed the congregations were dealing with these situations while at the same time pontificating in churches on how we, as individuals, should behave.

I spoke to a woman during a canvass recently who told me she would not go to church any more. I do not want that either because that is the other extreme. However, I can see how society would react in this way.

There should be four or five key points to be dealt with, starting with when a child in born, looking at the infrastructure and family background, which will tell a great deal, and having trained people who can pick up on situations very quickly. If we get it right and have trained personnel in place to help children at two, three or four years of age, we will have covered a lot of ground.