Deputy Mary Lou McDonald- speech from 25 Feb 2026

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 and 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, 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 raised with a number, whose innocence was crushed in dark rooms and in 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, their demand for truth and justice ignored. Survivors for too long 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, to brutalise and to dehumanise them, and 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, knew the culture of violence that dominated these places, knew the children would be met with cruelty masked as care, the same broken philosophy that gave rise to the mother and baby homes and the Magdalene laundries. We have heard the powerful testimony of many survivors, yes it remains hard to comprehend the gravity of the beatings, the sexual abuse, the emotional and mental torture, the excruciating tension of not knowing when that next horror would come, every minute, every hour of every day. Childhoods destroyed, lives ruined, unspeakable damage done, the physical scars run deep, the mental, emotional scars 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. 27 years ago, survivors heard a state apology from then-thesok Bertie Ahern. Three years later, the Redress Board was set up to provide financial redress to survivors, and then in 2009, the Ryan Report laid bare the shocking, endemic nature of abuse in industrial schools. The Residential Institution Statutory Fund Act was enacted in 2012 to manage contributions, very meagre contributions, from religious orders in the areas of housing, health and education. But 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 for the supports they deserve. And 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 Dunleavy Green and Morris Patton O'Connell protested on a hunger strike outside Leinster House. That is what it took for them to be heard by government. Miriam, Mary, Mary, Morris. Your demands of a state contributory pension and a HAA medical card to help address the lifelong consequences of the abuse that you and others suffered, those demands were shamefully ignored by government. You were allowed to go on hunger strike to the point where you developed real, genuine health concerns. I think you deserve an apology for that too. You called off your protest after proposals that were belatedly tabled by the Taoiseach. And 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. Today's apology is, of course, welcome and I hope it brings you. 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. To cry out for help and know that help was not coming. That's the harrowing story of Ireland's industrial schools. A story crafted by the Irish state. Overseen by successive governments hand in glove with the religious orders. But today the dignity, your dignity, of each survivor soars above all of that. You had to fight for far too long. You should never ever have to fight again.