Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. The speeches this morning have been among the best I have heard in the House. I say this as one who spent five years as a seminarian in the 1980s until 1990, as a regular Mass-goer and as one who has great faith and belief in God and religion. The Murphy and Ryan reports leave a sense of anger, bewilderment and need for repentance by the church. We are in Advent, a season of repentance and looking forward, of hope. My hope is that as a result of the great work done by the Murphy commission - I pay tribute to Ms Justice Yvonne Murphy and the members of the commission - we will have a new church and a new order. As Senator Bradford rightly said, no words of ours today in this Chamber will give redress to the victims. At the forefront of all we say and do must be the victims who have had horrendous crimes inflicted upon them by trusted people.

It is extraordinary that there was a veil of secrecy and, as the report stated, avoidance of telling the truth to avoid scandal and protect the reputation of the church and preserve its assets. The preamble to our Constitution mentions seeking to promote the common good, "with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations". We achieved so much in that paragraph of the preamble but lost the fundamental point. A fundamental break has occurred between the church and its people. We need a new order. We must create a new society and a new Ireland because the pillars of our society have cracked and crumbled. The institutions of our State, through the bad works of politicians, have tarnished all of us, as politicians. The church has been tarnished. It behoves all of us, regardless of party politics, not only to try to, but to create, engineer and put in place a new Ireland, where, as Article 40 states, "All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law".

What has happened is something none of us can even comprehend. I know from talking to victims of abuse that we can never give them their lost lives back. They have been imprisoned in a cell of hurt, anger and humiliation, not by themselves but by people they trusted. Reading page 5 in Part 1 of the Murphy report, I found it extraordinary that there is a 2000-year history of biblical, papal and Holy See statements showing awareness of clerical child sex abuse. I want to see us creating an Ireland of equals where the gospel message, "Suffer little children to come unto me for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven," is enacted. The gospel I read and l listen to still has resonance for all of us but the practitioners have lost the faith and trust of the people, and rightly so.

I make another point as a former seminarian. I am glad the church has changed its formation policies and the way in which people are admitted to seminaries and trained. The reality is that there are many good priests and nuns here who are doing and have done tremendous work. I know from talking to friends from my class in the seminary, in Cork and other dioceses, that they are genuinely outraged at what has happened. In our right sense of outrage we can lose sight of the fact that there are good people administering works in dioceses across the country today. We must never forget that the church has broken its special relationship in this State.

We hear about canon law, which I studied. We need to consider what the report states, namely, that canon law appears to have fallen into disuse and disrespect during the 20th century. Ms Justice Murphy is right. Bishops and archbishops of Dublin hid under the veil and protection of canon law when administration of justice to the victims was what was required. If we cherish values and cherish each other as individuals, then, as Senator Bradford rightly said, it is time we had a new Constitution that would reflect the new Ireland and the relationship between church and State, that would put in place the idea in a clear unambiguous manner that all of us have duties, responsibilities and roles and must live up to them. It would be a very good exercise for the joint committee on the Constitution to consider creating a new Constitution that would reflect the new Ireland, without diluting the role of each of us as citizens and outline our obligation to live up to what we are meant to be - citizens equal before the law. We have a responsibility to do that.

Other Senators referred to the Murphy report being difficult reading. If one reads both the Ryan and Murphy reports, the stories are human stories that make for very difficult reading. However, we must never allow either this or the Ryan report to sit on the shelf. We must never allow ourselves again be in a situation where such things can be allowed to happen. These reports must be acted upon. That is why it is important to move and take these reports as a movement for renewal: of the church in its relationship with its people and of the State towards renewal of its relationship and bond with the people.

It is very easy to criticise bishops and some bishops should resign. They were aloof and distant and did not act. We can all tell stories of priests moved from parish to parish, sent to or brought back from the missions. That was fundamentally wrong. As the report states, the secrecy that tried to protect the institution of the church at the expense of children was wrong and must never be allowed to happen again.

In The Irish Times this morning, Vincent Twomey, Professor Emeritus of moral theology in Maynooth, has written an excellent article about the restructuring of the dioceses here. We must examine seriously what Professor Twomey, who values people, states in his article in The Irish Times this morning.

The victims in this report deserve not just our apology or sorrow. They deserve and require us to act collectively, and they need the bishops to put in place a system to ensure this does not happen again. I hope this report, in its severity, will be the launching pad for a new Ireland where we can have a society of equals.