Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I assume that the Minister for Defence, Deputy Shatter, will be in attendance for the Second Stage debate on the Defence Forces (Second World War Amnesty and Immunity) Bill 2012.

Can he confirm if he will be here for our Private Members' motion on justice as well?

Second, I thank the Leader for his response yesterday with regard to the abolition of exceptional needs payments for religious ceremonies such as first communions and confirmations. For the information of the House, I have received written confirmation from the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, that her Department is ceasing those payments to families who require them so their children can be clothed appropriately for first communions, confirmations and other religious ceremonies. Most of us said yesterday that we were very disappointed with this move. Would it be possible to arrange for the Minister to come to the House in the next week to discuss this issue and why the Government or her Department has not made a specific statement on it? Last year, the payment was cut to ¤110 but now it has been abolished. Will the Leader schedule time in the next week or so for this? It would save me moving an amendment to the Order of Business, which I will not do this morning, asking the Minister to come to the House to address this issue.

Third, and most important, I wish to raise the report published yesterday on the Magdalen laundries. As I said yesterday, successive Governments over the last 40 years have failed these ladies. There is no question about that. All parties that have been in government over that period, including my party, share the blame for not acting sooner on this very serious issue. It is important to put on the record my personal and my party's grave disappointment with the Taoiseach's reaction to the publication of the report yesterday and that an apology was not issued on behalf of the State. Most people will have seen and heard the reactions on television, radio and in the print media this morning, of the many women who were effectively incarcerated in these institutions against their will. At the very least, the Taoiseach should have given a fulsome apology on behalf of the State and not just say he was sorry that women lived in that environment and under those circumstances. That is not good enough, and we are gravely disappointed with it.

It is a very detailed report, just short of 1,000 pages. All Members of the Oireachtas must read it, including the Taoiseach. I assume that the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, will take the debate on it when it is scheduled in this House and I hope she will give an apology at that stage on behalf of her Department. However, if the Taoiseach did not consider it appropriate yesterday to give an apology on behalf of the State, and I do not know why he did not, he will have a second opportunity to do so when the debate on the report is held in the Dáil in two weeks. I ask the Leader to urge him, on behalf of our group in the Seanad and on behalf of all Senators, to use that opportunity, after reading the full report, to provide the apology that is absolutely required for these ladies.