Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach's speech yesterday on the Magdalen laundries was encrypted with humanity, humility, compassion, understanding, generosity and the type of leadership that we expect from a man of his calibre. It was appropriate, long overdue but the right thing to do. This Taoiseach has proved that he does not take advice from his advisers and opinions from legal people but says and does the right thing. Yesterday was an extremely good day for Ireland, for democracy, for politics and doing the right thing for citizens who this State had clearly failed. To bring this to a finality, I would like to see the same leadership to be shown by the people who ran these institutions.

As a practising Catholic I believe that elements in the Catholic Church have a responsibility to follow the leadership of the Taoiseach and I sincerely hope that happens. I have every confidence that the redress system will be generous, fair and easily managed. I sincerely hope that the Catholic Church and the elements within it that ran these institutions pay their fair share under the redress system.