In recent years we have been confronted with the stark realities of the abuse of children. This has been a halting process which has often placed unbearable strains on victims striving to build a new life in place of the years stolen from them by terror. With dignity and bravery they have told their stories. They have challenged our collective complacency and, as the Taoiseach said on Tuesday, they have shown us we cannot put the past behind us by ignoring it but must confront it and learn its lessons.
One of the most striking things I have found in my discussions with victims is that they feel they must still fight to be believed. When I met one group of victims last week they began by saying: "Minister, we want you to believe that these things happened to us". They felt this was necessary because the reality of official action had never caught up with the rhetoric of empathy. The major revelations of 1996 had brought many promises but little action and the victims came to believe they were again being ignored by a public Ireland which would prefer to ignore the uncomfortable rather than face up to it. I repeat on the record of the House what I said to those victims: "The Government believes you; you were gravely wronged and it falls to us to do all we can to help you overcome the lasting effects of the ordeals you were put through."
The apology issued by the Taoiseach on behalf of the State and all citizens of the State was intended as a simple but fundamental demonstration that the Government is determined to throw up the shutters on the past, to learn its lessons and do all that can be done to heal its lasting wounds. This is not an issue to which the Government is providing a knee-jerk reaction. We have spent a large amount of time discussing it both informally and formally. Early last year the Taoiseach said he wanted his Government to be the one which adopted a comprehensive and appropriate response to dealing with both the effects and prevention of abuse. One-off initiatives were not to be entertained and an interdepartmental approach was to be adopted.
Last December a sub-committee of the Cabinet was established with the remit of drawing together a range of initiatives and developing a proposal to establish a commission into abuse. I was appointed chairperson of the sub-committee, which includes the Tánaiste, the Attorney General and five other members. Contrary to statements made by certain Deputies last week, we were not driven by a concern to find legal ways out of taking action. Our purpose is to find a means of moving away from the conservative approach which informed previous responses to revelations. The sub-committee, assisted in its work by a group of senior officials, primarily met informally and required significant bilateral contact between members. It considered international practice and a range of different aspects to past and present instances of abuse, including how abuse cases should be handled in the future. Our recommendations were accepted by Cabinet on Tuesday and announced that evening. We would not suggest the proposals are in any way a final response to all issues of child abuse, and it is clear further measures will be required, but they represent a major move forward.
The need for a forum for victims to tell their stories has been clear for some time. Added to this is the need to objectively examine the causes, nature and extent of abuse. It is intended that the commission the Government has decided to establish will fulfil these roles. In the interests of justice and the common good, this unusual move is not only justified but essential. As announced, it will consist of three persons. It is intended they will combine expertise in law, abuse and social services. A secretariat will be provided for the commission and such resources as it requires for additional assistance, including the extensive research which will obviously be undertaken.
The Government has decided to adopt an unusual process for the establishment of the commission because we want to make sure both its powers and operational details are what are required to meet its objectives. We envisage these will deal with matters such as privilege and compellability. We are establishing it on an administrative basis in the first instance. It will be asked to return to Government within three months with recommendations on such statutory powers as it may feel are required to underpin its work. We will then seek to enact the necessary legislation without delay. We welcome the support of the Opposition for this approach and its assurance that the legislation will receive priority treatment in the House. We want the commission to carry out its work without fear or favour and to go wherever it feels it must go to get at the truth. We want it to inspire the confidence of victims and for all individuals and bodies to co-operate fully with it.
The commission has not been set an easy task. It will be a unique body, different from anything else we have seen. The narrow legal and adversarial approaches which can so often be part of inquiries should play no role in its work as they would undermine its purpose. If the establishment of the commission is itself a statement about the need for us to mature as a nation, its operation will be another challenge to us. Can we approach it in good faith and openness, use it to confront issues long buried and proceed with this process in a dignified manner? For politicians it also poses the question of whether we can have confidence in it and give it the space to do its work without us seeking to interfere or grandstand.
The commission does not represent business as usual and the more we appreciate this and give it the support it needs the more likely it is to achieve its objectives. It is not about money, headlines or short-term gain, but about a search for the truth, an opening up to people who have suffered in silence for too long and a statement about what we want to be in the future. In many ways I agree with the suggestion that it is similar to the Truth Commission which operated in South Africa, with the obvious exception that we do not propose to offer an amnesty from criminal prosecution. Coming at the end of a century which has seen many developments in this country, I hope and believe the commission will be remembered as making a lasting and positive impression on our progress as an inclusive society.
It is well known that victims of abuse generally require counselling to help them to overcome its effects. I have heard many stories from victims of the difficulties they have faced in accessing counselling. In many cases victims have shouldered much of the burden for counselling due to the inadequacies of available services. In one case that has been brought to my attention, a victim was asked to attend counselling in the very building in which they were abused.
Victims have also been required to spend significant sums on getting to and from counselling. Each time the spotlight has shone on abuse, promises have been made about counselling but each time nothing has been done.
The Government has decided to deal with this by establishing a dedicated professional counselling service in all regions. Some £4 million per annum has been allocated for the service. Deputies will appreciate that, because of issues relating to the availability of staff, the new service will take time to get going. In the meantime, alternative arrangements are being worked on and we hope they will be announced by the Department of Health and Children within a fortnight. We will also ensure there is co-ordination between health boards on the implementation of best practice, and specific steps will be taken to promote widespread knowledge of the availability of services.
The issue of the applicability of the Statute of Limitations to cases of childhood abuse is extremely complex. Regarding sexual abuse, there is a body of international and domestic experience which can be drawn upon to guide legal changes. Evidentiary and related issues have been examined and it is reasonably clear what action is required. As announced by the Taoiseach, the Government has agreed to support the amendment of the statute to extend the concept of disability to victims of childhood sexual abuse who, because of that abuse, have been unable to bring claims within the normal limitation period.
We do not believe similar guidance is available in other cases and have decided to ask the Law Reform Commission for its recommendations. If, however, there is guidance which Deputies feel we have missed, such as the handling of the evidence of the effects of abuse and the operation of such cases in other jurisdictions, we would welcome this. The House will consider this issue in full and it will be dealt with by the end of this session. These are serious issues and I hope we can discuss them seriously, without attempts at oneupmanship and without the type of adversarial exchanges which are too often a part of our business.
Deputies will be aware of the other details of the Taoiseach's announcement on Tuesday. These reiterate and develop our policy on the protection of children. We will have a number of opportunities to discuss these in the House so I do not propose to go into them further here. Significant progress is being made and, while there is clearly much left to be done, the proposals under way will make a major contribution.
Over the past three weeks RTE screened a series of programmes on the abuse of children in residential institutions. Much of the material is harrowing and has had a major impact on everyone who has seen it. I acknowledge the incredible work of Mary Raftery and her production team for the "States of Fear" series. They have performed a major public service and have shown us all the compelling power of top quality documentary work.
"States of Fear" has provided an immediate context for today's debate, as have associated articles concerning the 1970 Kennedy report on reformatory and industrial schools. I have spent some time examining papers on this topic. Yesterday I met the surviving members of the Kennedy committee to discuss their work and I want to give the House some flavour of what I have found.
The residential care of children was formalised throughout the 19th century. Institutions were certified to receive children who were either committed or sentenced. Following the closure of the last certified school under Protestant management in 1917, every school was run by a religious order. At the turn of the century there were 71 such schools on the island, with a total of approximately 8,000 children. By 1970, there were 29 schools in this jurisdiction catering for some 2,000 children. The significant majority of children in the schools were there due to their guardians being deemed to be unfit.
This decline in numbers was the result of a wide range of factors, but, as has been pointed out, this country clearly differed from others in both the relative and absolute numbers of children committed to residential care. The patterns of neglect and abuse which have been publicised are clearly evident in the surviving evidence, both archival and oral. There is simply no doubt that these institutions were not only deficient, they witnessed serious levels of the direct sexual and physical abuse of children.
In 1968, the then Minister for Education, Donogh O'Malley, decided to do something about them. The mechanism he chose was the establishment of a committee chaired by District Justice Eileen Kennedy. It had 11 members, quite a number of whom were remarkably young, something which seems to have been a deliberate move on the part of the Government. One of the members told me that Donogh O'Malley said of the schools, in his typically direct way, "I want the skin pulled off this pudding". Unfortunately, he died soon after the committee was established.
They viewed their work as future-focused. They knew the system was rotten and concentrated on ways in which it could be replaced: this was particularly done in light of assurances they received that it was policy to close the Letterfrack, Daingean and Glasnevin institutions. They held 69 meetings and carried out an extensive amount of research, including into the operation of systems in other countries. Their policy on visiting the schools has been described to me by members of the committee as of being based on familiarisation rather than inspection. They collectively visited the bigger institutions and visited the others in small groups. While they wrote reports on the institutions, they did not comprise detailed observations, rather they included general impressions.
In their work, they received little assistance. The behaviour of many managers and officials has been described to me as, at best, silently obstructive. It was only due to the direct intervention of the then new Minister, Brian Lenihan, that the committee was given a proper secretariat. There was an always present sense that their operations represented the end of the way that things had always been.
As has been reported, the working files of the committee appear to be missing. My Department retains in the region of 46,000 files and records regarding the old industrial and reformatory schools. The files and records in question go back as far as the last century and their content varies very significantly in terms of detail. In recent years professional archivists have compiled a database of the files on behalf of the Department. Their work was completed last year. These files are made available for inspection by researchers with two obvious exceptions, namely, files involving the personal details of named children and files relating to current Garda investigations. Full access and assistance was given by my officials to the "States of Fear" researchers.
My Department also has a significant number of files dealing with policy issues relating to the operation of the industrial and reformatory school system. These files deal with a range of matters relating to the general operation of the facilities, including issues relating to funding, staffing and inspection.
The files in question include a number which relate specifically to the establishment of the Kennedy committee, the outcome of that committee's work and the action taken to give effect to the committee's recommendations. A number of additional files have been identified which deal with matters relating to child care issues and which would have been relevant to the work of the Kennedy committee.
With regard to the working files of the committee, the House will appreciate that prior to the introduction of the National Archives Act, 1986, and during the period now under discussion, practices relating to the keeping of files and records were not as well developed as they are today.
I first want to establish whether such files still exist within the system and the archives. I can assure the House that in the event of any such files being located, it is my intention that their content be placed in the public domain to the maximum extent possible.
I have arranged to appoint a professional researcher to draw from the Department's archives all files which would assist the commission or us in identifying the Kennedy committee's working flies, should they exist.
My officials have identified details of the only significant occasion on which the committee seems to have confronted the abuse of children. It is worthwhile for me to outline the details of this to the House.
On 28 February 1968 most of the members of the committee visited Daingean reformatory school. There impression of it was of a dismal place which should be closed as soon as possible. In the course of their discussions with the manager he was asked about the corporal punishment procedures. According to the account on file, "He replied openly and without embarrassment that ordinarily the boys were called out of the dormitories after they had retired and that they were punished on one of the stairway landings." The manager was asked if the boys were stripped and he replied that at times they were. "Some other committee member asked why he allowed boys to be stripped naked for punishment and he replied, in a matter of fact manner, that he considered punishment to be more humiliating when it was administered in that way." That is a direct extract from the file.
District Justice Kennedy wrote to the Department of Education on this and other matters and received a reply which dealt with everything but the punishment. While giving assurances about the closure of Daingean, assurance about the punishments stopping seem only to have been given as a result of significant disputes, the exact details of which do not seem to be documented. The exception to this is an April 1970 letter from the Secretary of the then Department of Justice to the Secretary of the then Department of Education. The Secretary of the then Department of Justice wrote that the official of his Department who was a member of the committee had signed the report on the basis of assurances which their Department had received that the Daingean punishments would be stopped. He wrote:
To sign a report which made no reference to the situation about punishment in Daingean would, in the absence of evidence that the practice had ceased, be to appear to acquiesce in a practice which is indefensible and for the con tinuance of which the Minister for Justice could not avoid some official responsibility arising out of his having registered Daingean as a suitable place of detention under the Children Acts.
His next comment reveals much about the approach to abuse even of concerned people:
On the other hand, to make any reference, however oblique, to this particular method of punishment in Daingean would be likely to lead to a disclosure of the situation and, in this way, to cause a grave public scandal.
This episode demonstrates, I believe, the need for everything to come out in the open. I have no doubt that there are many other such incidents in official records and that official neglect and ignorance was commonplace.
Rather than labouring our debate on the issue of the whereabouts of the Kennedy committee working files, it would be best to say that, while the members of the committee believe that they do not contain great detail relating to instances of abuse, they appear to be illustrative of the practice in at least one institution. In other words, that case in Daingean was highlighted. In most of the other institutions these were visits of familiarisation and they did not identify abuse issues. This said, however, if the files can be found, they will be found and they will be made publicly available.
The committee also detailed the manner in which the system was failing in just about every aspect of child care. For example, they showed that only four out of 41 personnel with child care responsibilities had any form of professional training in the area and the children received little or no education provision.
The issue of the impact of State funding on what happened in the institutions has been aired a great deal in recent weeks. This is obviously an area which the commission will examine in depth, but I want to make a few comments. The bottom line is that funding levels provide no excuse for the type of severe physical and sexual abuse which has been exposed. I am not suggesting that funding was what it should have been – indeed it was clearly deficient – but I think proper research would be required before we could accept as unarguable that the worst conditions experienced in the schools, particularly in terms of malnutrition, resulted from funding problems. One file I have seen from the 1940s showed a manager being removed from a school because of the malnutrition of the children and that the situation subsequently improved.
The report of the Kennedy Committee was wide-ranging and, I believe, visionary. It contained a large number of recommendations, some of which are only now being implemented. The more significant recommendations were acted upon and led to the end of the system as it then was. Group homes now form the basis of most care and the professionalisation of staff has been implemented. One of the report's lesser noticed recommendations called for an overhaul of school attendance legislation to include the employment of school welfare officers. Deputies will be aware that the Education Welfare Bill, which the Government recently published, acts in this spirit and overturns the enforcement-led approach so often evident in the past.
The concept of the child as a separate individual with rights came late to this country. For generations, many of our most vulnerable citizens suffered terribly when they had the right to expect support and protection. The system failed them, we all failed them and have continued to fail them by our inaction and neglect.
The preface of the Kennedy Report was short and specifically designed to say that things had to change:
Children need love, care and security if they are to develop into full and mature persons. For most children this is provided by a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with their parents, brothers and sisters. Children in institutions have for the most part missed this happy relationship. If they are to overcome this deprivation they must, therefore, be given love, affection and security by those in whose care they are placed.
I hope we can use our discussions positively and can suspend our normal approach to issues and demonstrate a common purpose. Throughout the work of the commission, and probably well beyond it, further horrific cases of abuse will come to light. More and more difficult questions will be asked and our concept of our society will be challenged. If we try, we can make this a healing process which will bring us closer to maturing as a society. If we achieve this, then hopefully we will have done much to mature as an inclusive, responsive and caring community.
