I am glad to have the opportunity to speak for the Labour Party in today's important and historic debate. I welcome the Taoiseach’s apology, which marks an important step in Ireland’s recognition of our shameful history as a society and of our appalling treatment of women and children over so many decades. It recognises that far too many of our people were incarcerated in reformatories, industrial schools, Magdalen laundries, mother and baby homes and other institutions in what is a very recent and shameful history. We acknowledge that today. Abuse was systemic and known about. It was covered up and brushed under the carpet. It has taken brave and courageous survivors over many years to shine a light into that dark and shameful history. I acknowledge the mighty Ms who are here today, namely Mary Donovan, Miriam Moriarty Owens, Mary Dunlevy Greene and Maurice Patton O’Connell. I welcome them, their families and supporters. Many are in the Gallery and many are watching online. I welcome Carmel McDonnell Byrne and so many more. I think of and acknowledge the late Christine Buckley. Carmel reminded me Sunday next marks 30 years since "Dear Daughter" was aired. It was in that ground-breaking documentary, made by the late Louis Lentin, that Christine described the horrific abuse to which she was subjected in Goldenbridge. I had the privilege of knowing Christine, who died so sadly in 2014. Carmel reminded me that Christine said about her appalling experience of abuse that survivors needed a year's counselling for every day they spent in those hellholes. I had the privilege of representing survivors of abuse before the Residential Institutions Redress Board in a previous life as a barrister. I heard first hand from people about the utterly horrifying experiences they endured - the appalling abuse, the vindictive, systemic, sadistic abuse they experienced in those institutions. For any of us who have heard or spoken with survivors, it stays with us all. I thank them all for shining a light on what went on for far too long and, as I said, about what was known about, covered up and systemic in so many institutions. It has taken great bravery. It has taken the courage of survivors to shine a light, and the campaign has taken far too long. The trauma we know was inflicted upon the survivors at such a young age will last a lifetime, and they should not have had to protest for so long in this latest stage of seeking justice. Meetings with survivors who were protesting outside Leinster House last autumn should not have been postponed or delayed, particularly as we know that delays magnify hurt. I am glad the protests culminated in the commitment from the Government to today’s State apology, but the apology must have meaning and an impact. I welcome the package of measures the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have announced, to include financial assistance, prioritised access to social housing, trauma-informed healthcare and education supports. These measures are welcome but survivors tell me they are keen to get a timeline for when the services will be put in place. They and their families are understandably anxious to know when the commitments will be upheld and when the services will be made available. Clearly, the first important part of continuing to right historical wrongs is the apology today. However, we must all collectively ensure that proper justice, full justice and redress are delivered to provide dignity and closure to a group of people who have suffered for so long. Thousands of children were subjected to systemic and sustained abuse in industrial and reform schools going back to the 1940s. I refer to physical, sexual and emotional abuse in schools operated largely by religious orders but funded and supervised by State entities. Neither the church nor the State intervened to prevent mistreatment. The Catholic Church, in particular, is known to have acted as a sort of shadow welfare State, operating institutions on behalf of the State, with the State abdicating responsibility to vulnerable children. I am glad to hear the Minister for justice is going to make clear that there will be absolutely no criminal records. Far too many of the adults I represented had been sent through criminal courts. They were appallingly criminalised by the State and sent to suffer abuse at the hands of religious orders in institutions. It is utterly shameful that there are people, still living, who had those experiences. It is long past time that the justice element was dealt with. The Taoiseach rightly described the publication of the Ryan report in 2009 as a watershed moment. I still remember people coming up to public representatives in the street and to so many others to talk about the experiences they had suppressed as children that were brought back into their minds by what the report revealed. That was an important step in uncovering State complicity as well as religious orders’ complicity. There was much that was wrong with the redress scheme I described, involving the Residential Institutions Redress Board. We have learned from that and we now know how much we need to ensure enhanced and substantive supports are made available to survivors. I welcome the progress to be made on the pensions point, in particular. There are two forward-facing points that need to be made. The first relates to our duty as legislators. We need to identify and address gaps in child protection legislation to ensure our legislation is now robust and fit for purpose and that the State is no longer able to outsource or neglect the care of the most vulnerable in our society. I am thinking of those who are still in congregated settings, those children who come here as unaccompanied minors and who are in State care, and children in State care in many different settings in respect of whom we have a duty and whom we must not fail again. The second call is to ensure the religious orders are made accountable. I have spoken before about how the churches, but particularly the Catholic Church, enabled a culture of secrecy and cover-up to develop for far too long, and how church authorities were very slow, also for far too long, to pay due redress, with the State paying a huge share despite having been promised that religious orders would engage in delivering justice. The Labour Party has introduced a Bill that seeks to address that imbalance. It seeks to facilitate civil proceedings against unincorporated bodies such as religious orders. It provides a mechanism for recovering damages from the associated lay-run trusts set up by many religious orders to hold their assets, so that those assets can no longer be shielded from unpaid redress. Successive Governments have repeatedly failed to compel religious orders to pay their fair share of redress, and many continue to evade responsibility. The Labour Bill is now in the lottery for debate during Private Members’ time. It is about ending the evasion and ensuring religious orders face accountability and that religious institutions that ignored abuse or enabled its perpetration are held accountable for the harm they caused. If we pass this legislation, the Oireachtas will have an opportunity to take a meaningful further step towards justice, dignity and truth for survivors. We cannot simply appeal to the moral duty of religious orders to ensure victims receive the justice they deserve. We have seen a slow pace of action, avoidance of responsibility and legal obfuscation for far too long. We owe an enormous debt of appreciation and gratitude to all those brave survivors and victims who have shown such tremendous courage in coming forward to make disclosures and reveal to us all the true extent of abuse in religious-run and State-run institutions, which occurred for far too long. I hope that all survivors or victims and their families watching and listening today will find some solace in today’s proceedings. I welcome the apology but we still need to do more to ensure true justice for survivors.

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