Victor Boyhan on Institutional Abuse: Thanks, Memory, Progress

Thank you. First I would like to welcome our guests and particularly our two colleagues on the front who are here and have been here many times in many other debates. I want to thank you Minister for your engagement and your predecessor for her engagement too. In preparing for today I was very conscious that I wanted to open with a positive line of thanks to a number of people and I want to thank your predecessor too. But just to fill in for those new people that are here who may not have met me or known about me, I speak with some knowledge of this, the lived experience, I lived in three state institutions in my life, in my entire life as a child and therefore there were different experiences and you bring with that the lived experience and there's no substitute for the lived experience. And it was only when I was thinking here today as I was coming up the stairs, it was 27 years ago that Mary Rafferty, now dead, who was the author of States of Fear, came to my home to discuss a whole range of issues around institutional care and the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children within the state. But in the care of the state and the care of the church, we need to be very, very careful. It is too easy to demonise the church and to demonise the religious and I want to pay a particular tribute to them. I am a member of a faith community, the Church of Ireland community by heritage, birth heritage and by choice. I am a supporter of the faith communities, I am not prepared to contribute to a negative about them all because that clearly wasn't the case. So I want to give thanks to the many unsung heroes and the many decent men and women of religious vocation in every denomination who gave their best, who were always good, who always put children and people in their care to the fore. Because they have been forgotten in the narrative of abuse of children within our state. I want to thank Mary Rafferty from the States of Fear for her remarkable programme. To Christine Buckley from Goldenbridge, dear daughters. From the former councillor and Mayor of Clown Mail, Michael O'Brien, who gave a very compelling personal testimony of his life. And John Bowman from RTE Q&A said, and I quote, words had a great impact than any other contribution of all of my audiences in the history of questions and answers. What an endorsement from John Bowman. I think of Philomena and Philomena's law, Philomena Lee, but Philomena's law that is currently going to Westminster. Currently, as we speak, it has been discussed in Westminster and how she championed the rights of mothers and children that were born or found themselves in mother and baby homes. I think of Catherine Corliss and give thanks to her for her great work and advocacy in Tewham. And in a matter of days, we are going to see the first excreations coming from there. And that is the story itself. I think of our former councillor, Damien O'Farrill, and his experience with the Christian Brothers, well documented, gone through the processes, who will be and is a key advocate in SAGE, which you have talked about, Minister. I think of Conrad Bryan from Mixed Races, who has spoken in these houses many times, and about the challenges of children from mixed race and the prejudice in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and where they found no place. I think of Senator Colum O'Gorman and his abuse and experiences at the hands of Father Sean Fortune in the Wexford Diasis, again all documented and in the public realm, and how he set up one in four to champion people and advocate for people, courageous as all that was for him and the price. And there are many others I think of, but I cannot let today go without thinking of our own Samantha Long, Michael McDoull's PA, who was on Joe Duffione the last two weeks on the Late Late Show and how she has championed the rights and works with us on these corridors of power as a constant reminder and an advocate for what happened to women and children and families at the hands of the church and at the hands of the state. So all overcame many obstacles to reveal the serious levels of historic abuse in Ireland's institutions. They battled courageously against government and successive governments who wished to suppress the secrets that they were committed to revealing. How remarkable was that? Their story shook the country to its core, shredding light on the harrowing physical and sexual abuse suffered by children under the care of the supposed care of the religious disorders and the non-religious and the industrial schools and places of detention. Thankfully the floodgates were irrevocably opened. They can never be shut. We are making progress. There is a lot more to be done. A public apology was of course issued, as you said, ministered by Bertie O'Hearn on behalf of the state. We had the Ryan Commission report. We had a subsequent public apology from Ukdorona Heron Mary McAleese. And again we had another apology from Enda Kenny, then Taoiseach. So the apologies were made. There was an acceptance that the state had an absolute responsibility. And going back to Mary Rafferty and the conversation 27 years ago in my home. She went on to make that programme to open up, to empower people, to allow them to share their stories. It's not easy to talk about your personal experience. They come up to you and the people say, you know, did your family not want you? What was the circumstances? There were many circumstances for all of us while we were in care. We had to live with that. We had to go around with the shame and the guilt. We could have if we chose to. Or we abandoned that and we decided that we can do other things with our life. My past has motivated me and politicised me. The greatest day of my life was coming into this Parliament. To be an advocate here. Did I think, as a young child in 1961, right up to the 70s, that I would be elected to my council. As a matter of fact, my happiest day was being elected to my own council in Dun Laoghaire. To going in that door, a door that I had gone into for years to receive hospitality. I was now back as a member and then to come to this Parliament. So, where you will have conviction, you move on. My experience politicised me and I hope I keep it under a certain amount of fine-tuning because it's so closely connected to you. It is an emotional tie, but I will never give up advocating for injustice and helping people along the way. Mary Rafferty, of course, went on then again to produce The Cardinal Secrets, the investigation to the clerical child sex abuse in our Dublin Diocese. Again in 2008, she reported on the medical malpractice and interference of bodily integrity of people at Our Lady's Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. Again RTE Primetime covered that programme. Back again in 2011, Behind the Walls was Rafferty's last production and has highlighted the appalling conditions of abuse in our Irish psychiatric hospitals. A tireless, a brave, a selfless woman, Mary Rafferty, died exhausted in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin on January the 10th in 2012 at the age of 54. It is said that she filled the elusive ambition of most journalists. She made the difference. I want to thank RTE, particularly Primetime Questions and Answers and Primetime Investigations. For that is public broadcasting at its very, very best. And again last week we saw it when it highlighted the issues of the nursing homes. What great credit in our national broadcaster, our public broadcasting that beams the truth into the homes of all of us. And that is something I think is important that we acknowledge. I am conscious of my time, Minister. I have read the Dáil transcripts. I noted the arguments for and against. I note what you said. I noted the voting record of the members and no doubt we will have some debate here next week. Many have said, and indeed you said yourself, we cannot undo the past. I say it is within our power to assist and make a difference, to help and give a helping hand, to collaborate with the church and state. And I appeal to the church, and that includes the Church of Ireland of which I am an active member by choice in. The Church of Ireland and all other denominations must come to the table. And they must give money forward. An indemnity scheme was entered into. To my view it might not have been enough. But a deal is a deal. And I say to the church leaders of all churches in this country, including my own, cough up, pay up. You have a moral responsibility. You cannot talk about transparency and justice and equality, with all credibility, if you will not come to the table with you and government to support it. I make some simple asks, Minister. I don't want to come in here and clog up the Oireachtas next week with a whole load of amendments that are all going to be voted against and the whip applied, etc. I understand the political process and it is nothing personal. You and all of us understand that too. So what do I ask for? I ask that special support be given to the special advocate Patricia Carey. I think she has done amazing work and I have read her reports. I know she does not report directly to you, but she does report to the Minister. And I think her work is exceptional and she has been in touch with us. I think there is a meaningful role because I know she has engaged with many people that I know. And I know the powerful impact she has made on their lives. So it asks you to engage and consider that. I am delighted to hear your support for SAGE and particularly I mentioned our former councillor Damian Farrell. But I am great to see that work and I think that is really, really important work because it is about the future. It is about helping people navigate the rest of their lives. I ask for a just redress scheme for those excluded. Not within the parameters of the scheme because that is too late. Call it what you will, but let us see if we can assist people with housing, give them a special status in terms of their application for housing points because I think that is important. Health, pensions, medical support and finally, and the last three I have, the boarding out men and women of this state. Many of them have been guests of mine in these houses that were boarded out illegally were slave labourers that lived in cattle sheds, drank water out of cattle troughs and lived up the clippings that were left from the main kitchens of these farmhouses. They are still alive and mainly in the west of Ireland but in other places. Let us reach out to them. Let us help them. We do not need legislation. We just need humanity, humanity and practicality. And then the multi-race, the children that were born to multi-race families that were away. And then to you, because I know Cahillic, your huge commitment is the forgotten Irish. The Irish that are walking the streets of London, Birmingham, Liverpool and further afield that have no place to come back to. Ireland is a very different place, thankfully. They need help. And through our agencies, and in fairness to our ambassador in London, amazing work is going on, reach out to the existing agencies and support them. And finally, and very finally, we have never addressed the issue of the drug trials. I lived in an institution where drug trials were taken, it is no dispute over it, Michal Martin spoke at great length in both houses on this. Drug trials were taken and carried out on children within this state. No compensation has been given. They are accepted that they have happened. We have the necessary documentation in relation to these reports. You know that Smith, Klein and Wellcome were involved. It is all documented. We must give them justice, the people that were impacted. Your former Alan Shatter spoke to me at the time and talked about the right to bodily integrity ensigned in our constitution. We owe it to the people. We owe it to the children and their families who were used without parental consent. No one seems to know in what local parentis they stood. They were used as guinea pigs for vaccines. It was wholly wrong. And we must revisit it sometime. I finish on that, Minister. I thank you, Ker Hillock, for your time. I really want us to work together in practical measures. Let's not tie ourselves in any more words. Let's not tie ourselves up with more and more sheets of legislation, but commit to a working agenda with SAGE, with the great advocate Patricia Carey. And let's help people who are mostly in their 70s now to finish their last days with dignity and respect, love and affection that they should have had so long, long ago. Because if we do that, we can put our hands on our hearts and say, we are really repentant. We are really going to do something for these people to give them their last days in this life with a little bit of comfort, the comfort that they rightly deserve. Thank you.