Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We need to be able to provide funding for people who may have been with counsellors for years who may fall outside of those structures. They may need support in covering the cost of those things. We should not therefore limit supports to particular places, especially in cases where people have been ignored by the HSE and Tusla. Actually, to be fair to Tusla, its report found evidence to uphold that there was an issue and against an appeal. However, to give true advocacy and agency to people who have been through so much, we need an independent report. We need that independent report to be matched with a needs analysis of what type of needs are there for people who have had to endure this, especially when we know that the State and the Garda have let them down, because they had been made aware of this. This is not something that has been uncovered that everyone is surprised by, because people did go to the Garda and to Tusla. The information was there and it is not new to any of us. The State, in several different guises of institutions, failed people at a particular point and we need to be able to offer greater support to people.

I will say again that justice has to be matched with transparency and truth. We as politicians must do everything to unveil the truth at all costs, because then people can stop fighting for the truth to be heard. If you are a survivor and your situation is being whitewashed or downplayed, you can never begin your true healing process if people are still not believing the gravity of the situation and there are many times when you were not believed, were not heard or were pushed from pillar to post.

At this point, we must have a public hearing and public debate on the report and then we must also seek a public inquiry. Like I said, the one perpetrator of whom we know had a lot of access to many people over a long time, so much so that he put some vulnerable people up in his home and they ended up with no house. That is information I have that not everybody will know. I work in those communities and that is how the information came to me. Like I said, other people contacted me about other jurisdictions of St. John Ambulance in other communities that are not even necessarily as vulnerable as some of the communities I am talking about. There are other communities that are well off. As we know, while spaces of vulnerability can make it easier to access people, there is no real class division in the perpetrators of sexual violence. We have seen from this week that it exists everywhere and we need to widen a public inquiry into St. John Ambulance.