Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Acknowledging Failures to Protect Children

And I want to acknowledge first and foremost the survivors here, both in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery and those who also have joined us as a community in other ways. The apology offered today by the Taoiseach is an important acknowledgement by the state for the wrong done to young boys, to young men within this state and not acknowledged and not handled correctly in any way by the institutions of this state. For the survivors gathered here and for those potentially listening beyond these walls, of course this moment is about something much, much more important than words. It is about taking this time to recognise that lives were forever changed. It's about acknowledging that childhoods that should have been marked by safety and possibility were instead scarred by abuse, the worst form of abuse possible. It is about sitting with those as children now grown and understanding the shock of abuse that occurred to them, the confusion and the difficulty in articulating it and nevertheless finding space for some people to be able to articulate it and not heard and not respected by the state. It is about honouring today the extraordinary courage of those who have carried these burdens, often in silence, for many decades. To the survivors of the Predator, Bill Keneally, I want to say that we do recognise the pain that you have endured. We recognise and say loudly the profound impact that this abuse has had on you throughout your lives and throughout your families. It has cast a long shadow across years that should have been filled with other things. As Minister for Health, I am particularly conscious of the ongoing impact that childhood trauma can take. We know that harm caused by sexual abuse does not end when the abuse ends. It can travel through a lifetime, leaving wounds that are deeply felt. Today we acknowledge not only the terrible crimes committed by Bill Keneally, but also the failures of institutions that should have protected children when warning signs emerged. The South East Independent Commission, and I thank Michael White in particular for his excellent work on this, found that when all of the evidence, expert opinion, guidelines and protocols of the time are considered, the Southeastern Health Board should have acted on the report prepared by Dr Geraldine Nolan on 6 March 1989. That should have happened. That finding weighs very heavily on me, it will weigh heavily on my predecessors and all those in the health system, because that failure involved real people and real lives. The failure of the Southeastern Health Board to act on child protection concerns was not simply a procedural failure. It was a lost opportunity to stop the continuing criminal abuse of children. It was a lost opportunity to intervene, it was a lost opportunity to protect, and it was a lost opportunity to bring accountability many years earlier than eventually occurred. As Deputy Bacik has said, the legal environment was already there. For survivors, that failure came at a human cost, and today we must confront that truth as the Commission has done. No words can return those stolen childhoods. No words can change or ease the suffering that was endured. But we can do better and we can learn. The report illustrates that very clearly the Irish state, through its laws, its services for children, sex education and awareness, but more than anything else, its culture, its combined culture of protecting the powerful, was blind to child sexual abuse operating under the surface in far too many places. Children were silenced by shame, children were silenced by their natural inability to articulate what was happening to them as children by shock and confusion of abuse. I note, though, that the report also recognises that changes in legislation and services and understanding of child exploitation has been profound. The approach of statutory services has changed beyond recognition, but I also want to say that those changes came very many decades later, and they did not come easy. I recall, if you'll forgive me, when I came into this House as an advisor, first being presented with the Coyne report, which detailed abuse in the Diocese of Coyne up to 2007. We published it in 2011, and immediately saw that that was a report, of course, that was used, where the bishops, the church leaders exploited what had been voluntary child protection guidelines to choose not to report abusers to Gardaí. With some difficulty, Francis Fitzgerald and Alan Shatter at the time introduced significant legislative change, a, to require mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse, which was challenged by the church at the time as being potentially in breach of the seal of the confessional, if you recall, an astonishing response to try to make such a fundamentally important change, and by taking the child protection guidelines, which were then voluntary, and putting them on a statutory basis. But it did take some four years later for the Children First Act to be enacted by this House, and that Act is important because it has changed the landscape, the legal obligation of mandated people, which include teachers, which include doctors, which include nurses, social workers and childcare staff, who are now legally obliged to notify and to assist TUSLA where there's a risk of significant harm to the child. That is not offered by any measure of defence of any kind, but it's simply to acknowledge how fundamentally the child protection landscape has changed and needed to change, and yet how difficult it was to ultimately make those changes in the face of a strong interest in continuing to protect the powerful from the accountability that was absolutely necessary. Because child protection is never somebody else's responsibility. Deference must be acted upon, not deferred. Information must be shared. Professional warnings must be heeded. Children must always come first. We know, this report has clearly shown, the health system's failure as part of that has clearly shown that where a child is at risk, inaction has serious consequences. So the legacy of this report, if I may suggest, is obviously more than remembrance and recognition. It is another imperative for all of us as legislators to be vigilant, to be continually vigilant about our commitment across health and social care and all other services where children are in contact, to place the safety and wellbeing of children at the very centre of everything that we do. To the survivors, if I may, your courage told truths that other people chose to ignore, sought to ignore. The abuse that you suffered, the opportunities to protect you that were missed, the bravery it took to articulate those things at a time when they wouldn't be heard, where you wouldn't be heard, the bravery that that took, and then the failure of the state, both in its health services and on An Garda Síochána, to act when they should have acted, and the hurt that has flowed for so many people from all of those failures. I hope that today will stand as a recognition of your truth and a tribute to your courage, and I hope that it will stand for us as legislators and for those who will follow us here as a promise of the lessons of the past will never be forgotten.