Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I too want to express my horror at what we learned in the "RTÉ Investigates" programme last night. It is important to remember that at the heart of all this are families with children, some of whom are the most vulnerable children in our State, and those families' quest to try to vindicate their children's essential constitutional right to an appropriate education in this country. Yet, last night, we heard an account whereby the Department of Health chose to spend valuable resources, time and money on an intelligence-gathering exercise on these families. These resources could have been better spent on trying to resolve the issues faced by these children. It must be an awful kick in the teeth to those within our health and education service trying to do their level best for these vulnerable children.

There are many questions here, but they boil down to why the Department was gathering this intelligence to start with and what it was doing with that information. There is a broader question here about culture. How can a culture be allowed develop within a Department that if one goes up against the State, one effectively does so at one's peril? Why would the litigation unit of a Department gather information on family members' alcoholism, obesity and their overall mental state? These are only some of the references we saw last night.

It is important to say that this is not the first time we have seen Departments attempt to abuse their position of power and trust to undermine a person's case. Indeed, we have very many famous examples of that. It is also not the first time we have seen a Department attempt to use information about a parent to undermine the case of a child. Later today, the Seanad will debate the Committee Stage of a very important Bill initiated by my colleague, Senator Ivana Bacik, to give naturalisation rights to children born here.

I recall the case of a child I would much rather not talk about today, but it is important to remind the House about it. This child's family was threatened with deportation three years ago. During that time, officials within the Department of Justice leaked information to the media designed to damage and discredit the family. It leaked information on how the mother came into the country and on her passport application process. Thankfully, that child was granted leave to remain. However, we are at a juncture in this State at the moment where there are far too many challenges to its legitimacy from the far right. We cannot allow a culture similar to what we saw last night to continue.

There are many thousands of public sector workers and civil servants who are doing an excellent job, day in, day out. We cannot allow them to be stained by the activities of a tiny minority but we need to get rid of this culture.