Vol. 558 No. 2
46 Mr. Costello asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform when he expects to announce details of the form of inquiry to be held into allegations of serious sexual abuse within the Dublin Archdiocese; if the inquiry will be limited to Dublin; if it will cover other areas in the country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23850/02]
I am finalising proposals in relation to this matter which I hope to submit to Government shortly. The Deputy will appreciate that in advance of that submission I cannot definitively answer the questions he poses regarding the form and scope of such an inquiry. I assure the House that I am giving priority to this matter because of the grave nature of the issues involved.
That is as brief a reply as I have ever heard.
I wanted to hear the Deputy's dulcet tones.
"Dulcet" is hardly the word.
The Minister's reply says nothing. He states that he is finalising reports and he expects to bring proposals before the Government shortly, which is the sort of thing that has been said a million times in the House when nobody knows what the outcome will be. The Minister will have seen the "Prime Time" programme which was shown a month ago and in which very serious questions were raised in relation to the Archdiocese of Dublin. Allegations have been made that the Archbishop and members of his staff may be hindering investigations into child sexual abuse by clerics.
The Minister indicated subsequently that he was finalising proposals in relation to establishing an appropriate inquiry. Presumably nothing has taken place since then. There is enormous public disquiet about this matter. These are the most vulnerable, young children who have been abused. We have seen how communities in recent weeks—
A question, please.
—have expressed their disquiet by actually marching where they thought one of the most serious abusers was being housed by the archdiocese. When will an inquiry be set up to deal with this issue in the Dublin archdiocese? Does the Minister intend to have a specific inquiry into one diocese or one archdiocese, or a national form of inquiry into child sexual abuse throughout the country?
Perhaps I can elaborate a little. I propose to bring before Government, as soon as next week I expect, proposals outlining a scheme of non-tribunal type inquiries. I do not want to go any further than that. This is to allow for inquiries with statutory powers which would not be tribunals of inquiry. In relation to the particular matter raised by the Deputy, the child sex abuse issue, I have noticed media reports to the effect that there was apprehension that evidence might not be forthcoming or that it might be destroyed. As the Deputy is aware, Detective Chief Superintendent Camon is in charge of a large team which has been assembled to inquire into these matters. I have been assured the investigating members are satisfied with the level of co-operation they are receiving from the archdiocese. They have experienced no problems in that regard and there is no evidence of any kind to date that documents are being disposed of or destroyed.
On the question of the scope of an inquiry, at this stage it is premature to attempt to describe in detail the approach I would favour. For the Deputy's assistance I imagine it will be into the systemic aspect of child sex abuse and how it was dealt with rather than an attempt to catalogue comprehensively every single case and investigate every single case of alleged child sex abuse. This is for one reason only, as the Deputy will appreciate, if I go down a Laffoy II inquiry in which every single case has to be investigated on a case by case basis as in the statutory inquiry, not the Garda inquiry, the process could take years. This is a matter on which many on all sides of the issue want closure.
The Minister has certainly given me much more information in the supplementary than in the initial reply. I would almost need to set up an inquiry to find out the information. The Laffoy inquiry has come to a standstill due to lack of information and lack of co-operation by those being investigated. By and large I agree with the inquiry being systemic rather than broken down into different dioceses, although the archdiocese of Dublin is very large and it might be necessary to look at it separately. Will the Minister assure me the new inquiry he is contemplating will have powers to compel co-operation by all those who will be subjects of the inquiry?
Yes.
