Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I join my colleagues who are reflecting in a very rueful fashion on the publication of the report into the child care scandal and the very grave cases which have now been highlighted. We must all work with the Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, to ensure that whatever legislation, management systems and reviews are required will not just be reflected upon but acted upon in the very near future. As a country, we are quick to reflect and sometimes deflect anger to others but this report and all its horrors must be like a mirror to the soul of the nation. We must ask ourselves what priorities we have in this country and what sort of management systems and structures we have in place that would allow so many children to be not just marginalised, but to have their lives almost ruined and in some cases to allow children to die.

I suggest that if this was the church rather than the State, we would be having a march already. We have to respond with the same strength, anger and sense of purpose that we have in regard to the abuses in the church. The State is not on trial; the State is guilty. We all have a duty to respond and to ensure that the lives of the children and future children of this country will not be blighted in the way so many children's lives have been blighted in past generations.