I thank the Minister of State, Deputy O’Donnell, for being here today. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the long-awaited and much-needed scoping exercise on the disgusting paedophile Michael Shine. He abused his position. In a depraved manner, he took advantage of his perceived respectability, and the trust we usually place in the medical profession, to abuse hundreds of patients. Today, I acknowledge and pay tribute to the courage of those victims – the survivors who have carried this burden for decades and who were denied not only justice but also any semblance of support in dealing with the pain and trauma of their abuse. I always get nervous when I speak about these things because they are so deeply personal to so many. You want to do justice to them and their trauma every time you come into these Houses to speak about them, but the truth is that none of us in here really can. The only way in which we can push for them is to make sure we listen to them now. Having listened to Deputy Nash, who has been to the forefront of this since he entered elected office, I note it is very rare that all the Louth TDs stand in this place in complete agreement. All of us knew what was going on. Everyone from County Louth and from our home knew about it. Even I, as a child, knew about Michael Shine nearly as a verb, not understanding what was involved, the abuse or its consequences. The reason we did not understand is because the victims were silenced and everything was in place to protect Michael Shine, the hospital and the authorities. Thank God we have had representatives like Deputy Nash and others to speak out about this and represent, in these Houses and other places, the people affected, the whistleblowers and everyone who, against all odds and to the detriment of their careers, spoke out against this absolute demon who abused so many. I cannot use the words I wish to put on the record of the House because they would be very unparliamentary. It is only when you hear the stories and look into the eyes of the men involved, the victims, that you realise what occurred. It is those eyes that I look at. I look at the wee pictures of what the men looked like as children. You look at your own children and think, “Jesus, it could be my wee boys. It could be my brothers.” It could be anyone. It could be any of us. It is important that the Government continue to listen to Dignity4Patients. I echo what other representatives have said here today about supporting and funding Dignity4Patients because of what it has been doing over decades, on a shoestring, to support so many victims. There are hundreds of victims. I hope a statutory inquiry is to come. The victims trust Dignity4Patients and we owe them respect. We owe Dignity4Patients so much in this House and we need to respect that. I very much acknowledge the work of Mr. Lorcan Staines SC and Gemma McLoughlin-Burke JC because the feedback I am getting from the survivors is really positive. The work is very important and really matters after years of frustration and mistrust. We have to keep it up and keep listening to the victims. It shows what can occur when Government actually listens, properly engages and places survivors at the centre of the process rather than at its margins. That is where it is at. As a Senator in the previous Seanad, I worked very closely with an awful lot of victims of the mother and baby homes. They very much felt outside every single framework. That is where we failed miserably regarding the related scoping inquiries. We forgot the victim. We cannot move on to the next stage if we do not do well on this stage. We have to make sure that all the buildings and settings in which Michael Shine abused the children are taken into consideration. This has to be the first part of a two-stage process. We have to make sure this is being done not only for the victims who came forward but also to ensure that what occurred never happens again, that there is safeguarding and that there is a trusted structure to report abuse. Victims are always silenced. They are always afraid that they will not be heard and they will not be believed. If there is a process in place as a default, they will come forward. We cannot change what happened in the past but we can change what could happen in the future and ensure the statutory inquiry has a strong focus on patient safety and sexual abuse prevention. Lessons must not simply be documented and thought about but acted upon. It would do us all well to listen to the stories and testimony of victims of Michael Shine because doing so grounds us in a dark, dark time for this country. It shows why it is important to listen to victims. It shows why it is important to have proper safeguarding in our hospitals. It shows why it is important that victims be believed, trusted and minded. An awful lot of this is just about minding people, looking after them and giving them some dignity. We owe it to the victims and to those who were abused as wee children to see this through fully, properly and without delay.

Sentiment score: 0.05