The dark shadow cast by what was done to children in Ireland's industrial and reformatory schools is a horror with which our country has never fully reconciled. Indeed, it may be impossible to do so. The scale and depth of the abuse, violence, hurt and life-lasting trauma suffered by victims has rippled and reverberated for decades, sometimes as quiet as uncertain as a whisper, sometimes powerful enough to rock our collective conscience but always there. The industrial schools were a State-sanctioned system of abuse of vulnerable children, operated on the watch of successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments. Children who needed care and safety were instead met with the most unimaginable cruelty. They were criminalised and victimised, swept under the carpet of society, swept behind iron gates and swept into places of unspeakable brutality. Responsibility for impoverished children was handed to the religious orders, and then a blind eye was turned to the extreme violence inflicted on them. Children, whose names were erased with a number, whose innocence was crushed in dark rooms and grey cold courtyards, children whose cries for help were drowned out by a depraved cruelty. Not only did the State and successive Governments sanction this systematic abuse of children but it was then covered up, survivors dismissed, their experiences sidelined and their demand for truth and justice ignored. Survivors, for too long, were robbed of their right to say without fear or contradiction "I was there in that place. These awful things were done to me again and again. It was done to me." The way the State chose to look after vulnerable children was to batter, brutalise and dehumanise them. The chosen setting was industrial schools. It would be easy to say that these children were forgotten but the State and successive Governments knew exactly where it had put them, knew the culture of violence that dominated these places and knew that children would be met with cruelty masked as care, which was the same broken philosophy that gave rise to the mother and baby homes and Magdalen laundries. We have heard the powerful testimony of many survivors, yet it remains hard to comprehend the gravity of the beatings, sexual abuse, emotional and mental torture and excruciating tension of not knowing when that next horror would come every minute of every hour of every day. Childhoods were destroyed, lives ruined and unspeakable damage done. The physical scars run deep. The mental and emotional scars are wrapped tightly around every heartbeat and every breath taken. For survivors, this is not a chapter of history because the trauma is with them still today, hardwired perpetually into their lives. Twenty-seven years ago, survivors heard a State apology from then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Three years later, the redress board was set up to provide financial redress to survivors. In 2009, the Ryan report laid bare the shocking endemic nature of abuse in industrial schools. The Residential Institutions Statutory Fund Act was enacted in 2012 to manage very meagre contributions from religious orders in the areas of housing, health and education. Let it not be forgotten that survivors had to fight and wait years between each step of progress and reparation. Survivors are still fighting for full truth, full justice, full accountability and the supports they deserve. That is what brought the four survivors of industrial school abuse to the gates of the Dáil last September for 51 days. Miriam Moriarty Owens, Mary Donovan, Mary Dunlevy Greene and Maurice Patton O'Connell protested and went on hunger strike outside Leinster House. That is what it took for them to be heard by Government. The demands of Miriam, Mary, Mary and Maurice for the State contributory pension and a Health (Amendment) Act, HAA, medical card to help address the lifelong consequences of the abuse they and others suffered were shamefully ignored by Government. They were allowed to go on hunger strike to the point where they developed real, genuine health concerns. They deserve an apology for that too. They called off their protest after proposals that were belatedly tabled by the Taoiseach. I can only hope and pray that the full package of measures is true to those proposals and that Government in full follows through on its promises. Maireann an tráma ón mí-úsáid a d'fhulaing íospartaigh in áiteanna tionsclaíocha fós leo sa lá atá inniu ann. Tá an Stát agus rialtas i ndiaidh rialtais freagrach as an méid a tharla sna háiteanna seo. Ní cóir go mbeadh ar ár marthanóirí troid a thuilleadh. Today's apology is of course welcome and I hope it brings them some comfort, but an apology without justice is really no apology at all. No child belonged in these places. No child should have endured such suffering. To be beaten and abused only to know that it would happen again, to be demeaned and know that this was allowed, and to cry out for help and know that help was not coming is the harrowing story of Ireland's industrial schools. It is a story crafted by the Irish State and overseen by successive Governments hand in glove with the religious orders. Today, however, the dignity of each survivor soars above all of that. They had to fight for far too long. They should never ever have to fight again.

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