Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What has been expressed by Senators thus far has been comprehensive and thorough. There is no question that we need transparency. The Leader's first call when she initiated this motion was for transparency in the publication of the report. I commend her on that.

I can imagine that the Minister envisaged having the portfolio for the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to be something other than his experience has been, which is a catalogue of absolute trauma. I commend him on how he handled that and dealt with the people who lived through trauma in the conduct of his office thus far over the two and a half years. He has again come to this Chamber to listen to Senators call for a public inquiry and transparency in order that those who have been traumatised can receive justice.

I am aware that the mere mention of another organisation and more child sexual abuse has a triggering effect for people and leaves a sickening feeling in the pits of their stomachs because when they have spoken out, they have not been believed. There is something at the heart of Irish society. This is not unique to institutions. Over the past 25 years, details of the most horrific cases of sexual, physical and violent abuse perpetrated in various institutions have come out. We now have St. John Ambulance. The so-called colleges of the elite have been included in the past few days. We have a fundamental problem in Irish society of not facilitating young people to speak about abuse. Their parents either cannot hear it or do not want to. Children take the responsibility of not traumatising their parents by saying this is happening to them. Perhaps we need to teach people the skills to hear this information when it comes from someone they love and treasure. How do we facilitate people being able to share that?

I absolutely support the motion. We need public inquiries in respect of St. John Ambulance and other matters. There is an idea that organisations can get people to sign up to non-disclosure agreements, which Senator Ruane has come out so strongly against. I completely support her in that regard. Organisations hide behind non-disclosure agreements and secrecy in order to protect their reputations. There is no reputation where there is secrecy. There is parallel job of work to be done. As a society, have we actually confronted the fact that there are people among us who have been sexually and physically abused and whose very souls have been torn apart by those in positions of power and trust? What they believe to be good about the world has been eroded. Their trust was torn apart at a very young age. How are we dealing with that as a society? In my view, we gaslight it. It is happening in families. The people who stand up and talk are the ones who are ostracised and talked and gossiped about. They are the people to be shoved off and locked into a corner. I have experience of this in my role as a counsellor - walking people and families through it. I have heard the experiences of people in my own life and walked with them through those experiences. I commend Mr. Finnegan. I can well understand the terrifying experience it is to be that lone voice that is not listened to.

There is a way to confront this, which I have spoken about with Leader. We must have a discourse in Irish society whereby we confront our past. Somehow, we manage to put sexual abuse out of sight. We manage to "other" it to organisations. We also "other" it to individual perpetrators when, in fact, we need to somehow be able to facilitate victims being able to share what they are saying and walk beside them, holding their hands, as they name perpetrators. It should only take one. I am horrified by what I have heard today. It should only take one person for it to be believed and to trigger an investigation. We also need to strengthen the law on complicity in the context of people who knew or know about someone's actions and do not act. Mandatory reporting is clearly not enough, and it is confined to those who are in particular roles. There needs to be something else in place for when a person hears about something and does not act. That is shameful.

These people are now in their 50s, 60s or whatever. Once people have that experience, they will be triggered and traumatised for the rest of their lives. The what-could-have-beens of trust and hope are eroded and broken. We can build supports around people to recover. We can build skills around them to believe and have hope and relationships thereafter. We can do that; it only takes a word to trigger it again. A bigger conversation needs to happen. I commend the Leader on this motion. I am glad for the cross-party support. We need this published, absolutely, but we also need a public inquiry.