Maria Corrigan (Fianna Fail)

I support the calls for the Minister of State, Deputy John Moloney, to be invited to appear before the House following the articles that have appeared in today's edition of The Irish Times. I have no doubt that not only would the Minister of State come before the House as soon as possible, but that he would also welcome the House doing so to hear Members' views, opinions and thoughts on how we can ensure the best possible place of safety for the more vulnerable in our society. The Government spends billions of euro in providing services for people with disabilities. Having raised on a number of occasions the issue of establishing an inspectorate for residential services for both adults and children with intellectual disabilities when I first came into the House in September 2007 and repeatedly made such requests and having been told it would not be possible to establish an inspectorate, it was the Minister of State who, in his initial days in his Ministry, gave the commitment that before the end of this year an inspectorate would be established for children's services and that he would do his utmost to ensure a similar inspectorate would be established for adult services. When we have spoken on the Ryan or Murphy reports or on any occasion we have discussed people with disabilities, we have all made the point that none of us wants to be back here in ten years beating our chest about a new report showing that while we were discussing previous reports, there was an issue regarding the safety of vulnerable people. This is a service for which the taxpayer is paying. Inspectorates and standards alone are insufficient. They will not achieve what we want. The taxpayer pays that money to provide a safe environment and achieve the best possible quality of life for vulnerable people. We have a responsibility to ensure that is what the money is used for. There are too many aspects for me to go into in detail today, but we need a debate that focuses on that and which does not have superfluous aspects.

One example of why standards and inspectorates will not do is that currently no supports are available for an adult with intellectual disability to give evidence in court. We have done tremendous work in putting in place supports for children to give evidence in court, but there is none for adults. That means that many of the outcomes as regards allegations being made cannot go before the courts. That is one aspect we need to address.