Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to join with others, on behalf of the Labour Party group, in expressing sympathies to the family of the late Deputy Peter Mathews on his sudden passing yesterday.

I call on the Leader, as other Senators have done, to arrange a debate on the State's response to the reports of abuse committed against the child known as Grace while in foster care in Waterford over a long period of years. The reports have been published today after a five-year delay. The findings have been widely publicised in the newspapers. I do not suppose any of us have had a chance to read them in detail. I would like us to have a debate once we have had an opportunity to read them. The litany of sexual and physical abuse and, indeed, of neglect perpetrated on this child right up until she was finally removed from the home in 2009, many years after the initial decision to remove her, as we understand, to have been made in 1996.