Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy John Perry, to the House again. He is a frequent visitor and is always most welcome.

I welcome the all-party support for this critical legislation for child protection. The people recently voted in favour of inserting the rights of children into the Constitution. This was ground breaking, necessary and important. It was an accurate and fair response to what had happened before. As a result of that vote, however, there is an onus on the Houses of the Oireachtas to legislate accordingly. I hope there will be a comprehensive suite of legislation in the area of child protection. The Bill is an extremely important part of ensuring children are put at the heart of everything we do in society.

Vetting of people who have regular access to children is a must and is just. One often received anecdotal information over the years whereby a someone might say they would not let a certain person within an ass's roar of their child. Parents were very much in tune on this and the person they suspected was somebody about whom they needed to be concerned. History over the decades has shown there were sex offenders disguised in all facets of individuality among the citizens. The profile could range from the most professional, highly respected sports stars, teachers, coaches and people in the public domain to people in the religious orders. Although the religious orders tend to get the publicity and the ball-breaking headlines, the other professions are equally represented in terms of people who have interfered with the most vulnerable members of society, our children.

This legislation is important. It is also balanced. It is pointless to require an individual who might take part in the annual sports day or the annual St. Patrick's Day parade in the community, where they are visible to the public at all times, to go through the Garda vetting process. It will just clog up the system and ultimately make it unworkable. This legislation targets individuals who have regular access to children, whether it is through work or voluntary activity. Thankfully, there are significant numbers of people in this country who participate in voluntary activities, ranging from youth clubs to a myriad of sporting organisations. In recent times, we have seen new sporting activities such as cricket coming to national prominence.

There is a meitheal spirit among the people. People want to be involved and if there is one benefit of the downturn in the economy, it is that people are beginning to realise the importance of community and that one can achieve a huge amount of satisfaction, both personally and within one's community, by participating and being involved. I hope this meitheal or community spirit and the sense of belief and generosity will not change when our country inevitably gets back on its feet and is in a position to move forward. I hope what we have learned and what we are achieving will be sustained. I see it in my community and others. The type of people who are involved in community activities now would not necessarily have been involved at the height of the Celtic tiger economy. That is very welcome and there should be some way of ensuring this type of voluntarism is ring-fenced as we move forward in order that people realise everybody is part of the community. A community is a community because of its people.

However, the new people who are involved must be properly vetted and the system must work. I noted Senator Mooney's comments about the delays, and those are unacceptable. People should not have to wait for a prolonged period to secure Garda clearance. Perhaps the legislation will have to be amended in due course. Amendments will probably be tabled on Committee Stage, but I consider this legislation to be an incremental type of measure that can always be reviewed, if that is deemed necessary, and further strengthened. We would all be amenable to that. The welfare of children and legislation such as this are political issues but, thankfully, not party political ones, and the generosity from all sides of the House is very welcome in this regard.