Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and I wish him well in dealing with this. I listened carefully to what he said and I also listened to what Senator Corrigan said. Although I do not support the Government's counter motion, the points made by the Senator at the end of her speech are very important.

I referred to the case earlier about the murder of the 14 year old girl in Sligo. I will not comment on the innocence or guilt of anybody charged, but the real issue is that the child came from a family with problems. That child was on our books but she was dead for one year before anybody started looking for her. There is something wrong with that.

I remember chasing up the background to two horrific murders about 15 years ago. One of them was a murder in Clontarf where a man in his own home disturbed a burglar and the burglar hacked him to death with a golf club or some implement that was nearby. The guy was found guilty of murder and is serving life for it. I checked back on him and I found out that when he was four years of age in junior infants class, his teacher and his principal asked for a psychological assessment. This happened well before the establishment of NEPS. Before he reached 11 years of age, that school twice pleaded for support for that child from a dysfunctional family, claiming that he was clearly heading for trouble, and he committed murder afterwards. Nothing was done.

Another well known case was that involving Brendan O'Donnell in Clare. He murdered a mother, a child and a priest. I decided to look at the background of Mr. O'Donnell and how he behaved as a child in primary school. In junior infants, the school authorities expressed their concern about him. He used to lie on his mother's grave in the middle of the night when he was four, five and six years of age. The school asked for help and support, but it was not there.

I put these examples forward to back up the point made by Senator Corrigan and the Minister of State about the need for early intervention and to deal with issues in an appropriate way. They also highlight the need for mandatory reporting. The two examples showed that the schools took the initiative, even if it did not do any good in the long run. There should be consultation at school level where all the different groups involved in dealing with a difficult child come together. There might be a probation officer, a health board officer, a worker from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a psychologist and so on. These people sometimes do not know about the others. I have come across many instances of that, so the information should be put together at primary school as that is where all the children attend.

I have much respect for the Minister of State. I listened very closely to his speech as I wanted to hear why he did not publish the report in full. He spoke about the need for a delicate balance to be found between protecting individual rights and the sharing of knowledge with the public. I agree with that. People cannot be damned on the basis of a report like this. There are certainly plausible arguments to be made for not naming people, but I do not understand why the format for the Ryan commission report was not followed. Pseudonyms could have been used and we could have left it at that, so that we could at least read what the report was saying. There is nothing that destroys and dilutes the impact of a Minister faster than legal advice. The Minister of State should ask Michael Noonan about that. It is only advice. The legal people are not politicians and they are not answerable to the people.

It is not just about the delicate balance on legalities. How did the Minister of State see it as a representative and the advocate of children? I accept his word if he felt that he put a balance on it here and there. What is the worst that could happen if we published it in full? How can we ameliorate that? We could put pseudonyms into the report so that it could be published in full. That is worth considering.

The Fine Gael motion asks that this report be referred to the committee. There is no reason that it cannot be referred to the committee in confidence, as a confidential document, either with the names blacked out or not. The Minister of State, on the basis of the argument he makes, has no responsibility other than to keep it from the wider group. If public representatives are to learn from this, they must be able to read the report. I accept the argument that they do not need to know the names of the people. However, they do need to know how the process worked or did not work. There is a certain offensiveness — I accept this is not his intention — in the Minister of State saying even a committee elected by the people to deal with this issue cannot be told.

I heard recently that senior officials of the Health Service Executive have not seen the full report either. While I do not wish to hark back to the bad experience in terms of confidentiality experienced by the Minister of State on the last occasion he was in this House, there must be trust and confidence. The person who discloses the information will be the person at fault. In my opinion, no case has been put forward to stop people who need this information to learn from it and to develop legislation from it to prevent this happening again from knowing all the facts. This could be done in private session of the committees. There is nothing unusual about that. Issues surrounding the conduct of a judge — I must be careful of my words — were discussed in private session of a committee. There is no reason this could not be done in that way. I ask that the Minister of State rethink this matter and consider addressing it in that way.

While I do not know what is and is not discoverable, I do know that no judge in the land, recognising the clear distinction and separation of powers between the Executive and the Judiciary, would find against a Minister if he, she or the Department argued they made available documentation to an appropriate committee of the House in confidence. For this reason, I believe the Minister of State's reference in his speech to legal advice is, with due respect, a little light. There must be more to it than that, although I am not suggesting anything other than that is the case. I am sure the decision was made with the best of intentions one way or another. However, I believe this matter can be dealt with in a different way and that the Minister of State should make a decision on whom he considers appropriate to have this information. If not a member of the committee, I will not need to see it. However, I do not see why members of the committee should not be given the information in confidence. On the basis of the separation of powers, I do not believe the Judiciary would intervene in such a situation.