Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I compliment Senator D'Arcy on his deft linguistic analysis of Sinn Féin's utterances.

I want to focus on one word, namely "rehabilitation." I was present to hear the director general of the Irish Prison Service apologise for what happened when Mr. Martin McDermott absconded from Loughan House. While it is right that people are annoyed, angry and hurt by what happened, and it is appropriate that the apology was made, I am concerned, as Senator Bacik said, about any possible chilling effect which could take place as a result of appropriate decisions made on rehabilitation, in particular the use of open prisons.

We should bear in mind the statistic mentioned by Senator Bacik, namely, that only 6% of people are incarcerated in open prisons compared with a much higher average in other countries, in particular Nordic countries, and how useful they are from a rehabilitation point of view. The apology is appropriate but it is also appropriate that we would not lose sight of the bigger picture.

On rehabilitation and its connection to the Mahon tribunal, one of the problems with the tribunal culture is that we have arrived at a situation where there seems to be very little possibility for redemption or rehabilitation of people. That leads to people on the one hand going into a spiral of denial and on the other going into a spiral of condemnation.

Having regard to what the Minister, Deputy Burton, said about Mr. Denis O'Brien in the Dáil, I am worried there is a creeping culture of judgmentalism where people are being inappropriately tarred for all time, even when they have a significant contribution to make to the benefit of the country. The Minister, Deputy Burton, does not seem to have a problem with the Taoiseach sharing a platform with Mr. Wen Jiabao or Mr. Xi Jinping in Beijing. Just because they have not been found guilty of anything in a tribunal does not mean they do not have very serious questions to answer in terms of human rights.