David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I wish to raise a number of issues, the first of which relates to privilege. I refer again to the submission made by the Ombudsman for Children who made a number of interesting observations and dealt with two forms of privilege - legal privilege and clergy-congregant privilege, an issue we discussed on Second Stage. She called for section 2 to override legal professional privilege and stated something similar should happen with sacerdotal or clergy-congregant privilege. The Bills digest states, "The Bill makes no specific reference to clergy-congregant or sacerdotal privilege nor does existing Irish law. The privilege between a priest or spiritual adviser and a congregant can take two forms: Confessional privilege ... and Congregant privilege".

On Second Stage the Minister said that if somebody came forward to a priest or anybody else in whatever setting, he or she was obliged to comply with the legislation and the fact that was not stated did not mean he or she was exempt. That is my interpretation of his analysis, but it is interesting that the Association of Catholic Priests which represents 800 clergymen has stated it will not break the seal of the confessional. The Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Raymond Field, stated, "The seal of the confessional is inviolable as far as I am concerned, and that's the end of the matter." We must make it clear to everybody, including the church, that children's rights and the laws of the land come first. This should be crystal clear. If that moves us to a point where people think the confessional seal is more important than dealing with information people might possess on vulnerable children in the appropriate way, as set out in the Bill, that is serious. For the purposes of clarity, will the Minister deal with fears others and I have about this issue to ensure there will be no hiding place for anybody, including priests who may use the confessional seal to avoid coming froward with information? We want certainty on the issue.

On the reasonable excuse defence, I would like to outline a scenario because, as public representatives, we must be clear on what our duty is. As public representatives, we must be clear on our duty in this regard, given that we deal with very complex queries on a range of issues from constituents. In my own case, for example, during the years several people have divulged to me that they were abused in the past. I dealt with one case in which an individual who was dealing with a number of complex personal issues informed me that she had been abused by a parent 20 or 30 years before. This, she revealed, was one of the causes of the psychological distress she was experiencing and for which she was receiving treatment. She did not want me to do anything with the information at that point - she had never informed the Garda and had no intention of so doing. To go down that route, she believed, would cause serious problems for her family. Many who have suffered abuse in this manner take the decision to deal with it on their own, as is their right.

The difficulty arising for me from this encounter was my awareness that the alleged perpetrator of the abuse continued to work with children. Such cases, in which an adult divulges that he or she was abused in the past but does not want to take any action in that regard and in which the public representative is aware that the alleged abuser has ongoing contact with children, point to the complexity of this issue and, as I said, the difficulties in dealing with it in legislation. There must be absolute clarity on the responsibilities of public representatives in this regard. In fairness, the Minister set out very clearly in his closing contribution on Second Stage what the Bill was designed to do. One assumes most of it is common sense, that is, where one has reasonable cause to believe abuse is taking place, one should provide the information at one's disposal for the Garda. This is not about third or fourth party information. However, there are issues to be clarified such as in the case I referred to where one is not in a position to go to the Garda on a specific matter, but one is concerned that a particular individual is in contact with children. What are the guidelines and responsibilities in such instances?