Holly Cairns: End Delays - Redress for Survivors Now

I want to read into the record the testimonies of two women who were sexually abused by Leo Hickey, their principal in Dundero National School in Kinsale. One said, sometimes while abusing me with his right hand, I would see him put his left hand inside the clothes of the lower part of the body of the girl beside me. This could last for the duration of the class. Another said, I remember feeling something hard pressed against the small of my back and I remember wondering what this hard object was. I thought it was something in his pocket. This seemed to happen for a long time, but it probably lasted 10 minutes. I remember wanting to get out to play before the break would be over. Taoiseach, these women and 17 of their schoolmates are rightly seeking redress for what was done to them as children. They were failed by every system that was supposed to protect them and they are still being failed today. Taoiseach, Leo Hickey was eventually convicted while the state managed to evade all responsibility. I spoke to Louise O'Keefe today who spent 16 years fighting to change that. The state fought her, in her words, tooth and nail every step of the way, pursuing her through the courts and aggressively seeking legal costs against her. In 2014, she finally won at the European Court of Human Rights which found the state had failed in its duty to protect children. That judgment should have been a turning point. Instead, in a textbook Irish government approach to how it treats survivors of abuse, the redress scheme excluded the very people it was supposed to help. Incredibly, 19 victims of Leo Hickey, whose evidence helped secure his conviction, have been denied redress. Their testimony was good enough for the criminal court but somehow isn't good enough for the state. It is unbelievable. Taoiseach, in 2019 you stood on this side of the house and said, the O'Keefe judgment demands that every child who experienced sexual abuse in a defective child protection framework in schools be compensated for that abuse. You also said that redress should not wait for the results of any commission of investigation. Survivors do not need another review, another report or another excuse. They need a government willing to do what you called for yourself. So Taoiseach, I have two questions. Do you recognise the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights and if so, will you commit to providing fair redress to all survivors without arbitrary barriers? First of all, thank you Deputy for again raising this issue and as I've said, the abuse committed by Leo Hickey was horrific. It was unconscionable and the suffering and the trauma that people went through because of him has been life-enduring, life-lasting. You're correct in 2019, I did advocate very strongly that the original redress scheme of 2015 was far too limited and that led to the appointment of Judge Irla O'Neill to recommend an expansion of the ex gratia payment scheme. And that's what I've already referenced in terms of that opened it up to some degree back then in terms of 128 people, not just, not all obviously were in Dundera but I didn't have the identity of all of them. I actually represented one or two people myself from outside of Dundera who had come to me as a TD at the time because I was not in government then and that person would have received compensation at the time. But even that is at a modest level if I'm honest. So the legal representatives have written to the Attorney General last week and as I said, we're going to engage in a constructive way and I do want to see a resolution of this. But there are wider implications also and in the context of what emerged in the last number of years in some religious run secondary schools which led to the scoping inquiry which has recommended a full inquiry which we've established into abuse in primary schools and general all schools across the length and breadth of the country and also the issue of redress and how that would be handled. An interdepartmental group was established to deal with that which will have far-reaching implications all around but also in terms of accountability and responsibility. The established mechanism was that where schools were run by the diocesan authorities or run by religious orders, it was those who were primarily culpable in terms of abuse that happened. In the context of Dundera of course in the 1960s, this was pre any official guidelines from the state or government to these patron bodies in respect of safeguarding children and in respect of guidelines that we have today like children first and we have a far greater framework of laws and of guidelines to try and protect children which did not exist then. That is the area where the European Court found the state culpable in respect of that the adequate safeguarding was not provided to schools at that particular time. So we will take this forward and we'll revert back to the House in due course. Taoiseach, what you've highlighted there is a well-established practice of the Irish state so at the hands of the state people are seriously and systematically abused, they try to seek justice, there's delay, delay, interdepartmental group, commission of investigation, redress scheme that's blatantly cruel and excludes the people who need it, do it all again, another redress scheme that doesn't work again, delay, delay, consult. You said today that you should positively engage and listen to these people. I spoke to Louise O'Keefe this morning and she said that she met you in March 2025, you said you'd get back to her in a month, she hasn't heard from you since. This isn't engaging positively. She went to the European Court of Human Rights after fighting the state for over a decade, she won. 18 other people were abused in the same school by the same man, their testimony was used in the criminal court to convict him but you won't take that as good enough to provide the redress that these people have been waiting for over a decade for. You're going to delay more, another interdepartmental group, another redress scheme, is it? Why won't you commit to giving these people what they are entitled to now and end this despicable practice of disregarding survivors, delaying, delaying, delaying? First of all it's not delay, delay, delay in respect of the mediation that has been sought by the representatives of the survivors of the abuse of Leo Hickey and so we will engage in that mediation. Now irrespective and obviously there's a wider, I'm just referencing there is a wider redress issue that does have to be examined in the context of schools in general, across the nation, over the last number of decades. That's the point I'm making and this has been in the legal framework for quite some time as well and I've no issue with meeting with people but government has to resolve this as well and come to conclusions in respect of it and I'm clear in terms of what we need to do specifically in terms of these survivors of this particular abuse but there will be others as well and there will be other schools and there will be need for further responses in different contexts and that was the idea of the, first of all, the overall comprehensive inquiry and then the idea of an interdepartmental group to examine how we deal with all of these issues, not just in one school or two schools but in the generality of where abuse has taken place.