James Heffernan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Senator Moloney, it is great to see a bit of passion in the House. I welcome it. I learned with regret this morning of the passing of Christine Buckley. She was a courageous and tireless campaigner on behalf of the victims of institutional abuse. She was inspired by a fight to get justice for the people wronged in these places.

In July 2012 when we debated the Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Bill she was in the Visitors Gallery. I was happy then to have the opportunity to meet her because I said at the time that what happened in these schools was Ireland’s Holocaust. The schools were nothing short of concentration camps where innocent children were beaten, raped, tortured and abused. What happened to children in those homes stayed with them throughout their lives and continues to affect the survivors and their families. There are thousands of them here and abroad. I have met them living on the streets in London. I know a victim who walks the streets in my own town. He has never been right.

It took Christine Buckley 15 years of counselling to be able to come forward in 1992 and speak publicly of what happened to her. It took another couple of decades for the Ryan report to acknowledge what happened to these victims. There is no form of public acknowledgement of this, no display or memorial. There is nothing. These industrial schools covered the country, from Letterfrack to Clonsilla, from Dún Laoghaire to Glen. They were all over the place yet we do not acknowledge them. It is high time we had a debate on this. Will the Leader invite the Minister for Education and Skills, who I believe is responsible for this, to have a debate on this issue and acknowledge these schools? Let us open them up, and show them up for the concentration camps they were, like Auschwitz. Let us not keep putting our heads in the sand about this.