Nicole Ryan
Administrative Panel · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“This is not just happening in my area; it is also happening in other places where estates are not being taken in charge and, therefore, residents do not know who to call if something happens. They are left alone. Tanyard Wood is unique because nobody has taken charge of the estate for ten years.”
“By 2007, the developer had gone bust and therefore, Cork County Council submitted an appeal to take charge of the estate. It has been almost ten years and it still has not taken charge of the estate. It sits in no man's land. The estate has not been maintained. No proper maintenance at all is happening.”
“It means that cancer patients in the mid-west have virtually no opportunity to access clinical trials. Accident and emergency access, dentistry and now access to clinical trials for cancer patients - how did we get to this point?”
“I will speak briefly on amendments Nos. 39 and 41. Amendment No. 39 is quite straightforward. It ensures that applicants are clearly informed of two fundamental rights within their international protection process.”
“At the core, the amendment is about ensuring individuals entrusted with supporting some of the most vulnerable children in our system are properly trained, suitable for the role and held to appropriate standards.”
“We need clear timelines. Interim measures are required to ensure residents are not left feeling unsafe or conditions are allowed to deteriorate while progress drags on. People bought homes in the area in good faith.”
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“Deportation orders should be enforced and tracked, but the Government cannot continue to pretend that surrendering more and more decision-making powers to the EU is somehow the answer. Let us remind ourselves that Article 4 of Protocol No. 21 allows Ireland to opt in to EU regulations after they have been adopted, once we know exactly what we are signing up for. This is a prudent and responsible approach. What the Government is instead doing is rushing to opt in early under Article 3 and, in doing so, binding the State to whatever comes out of the EU-level negotiations, even if it does not serve our best interests. Once we opt in under Article 3, we are bound. We have no veto and there is no going back. That is just bad governance.”
“Quite frankly, that withdrawal tells us everything we need to know about why this Government's approach is flawed and reckless. It is extraordinary and deeply worrying that the Government is preparing to opt in to regulations where the nature of Ireland's participation is still being discussed with EU partners. It was only at the eleventh hour, citing the complexity of the hybrid legal basis, that the motion was pulled. If anything, this proves our point that the Government should not be opting in early under Article 3 when it has the option to wait until Article 4 and to make an informed decision. Sinn Féin has been consistent. Where someone is not entitled to remain in the State, the State must act.”
“I welcome the Minister back to the House. It is good to have him back with us today. We are being asked to debate three significant motions concerning regulations the Government is proposing we opt in to under Article 3 of Protocol No. 21 to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. This is not a debate about whether we need a fully functioning, fair and efficient migration system. We do, of course, and we all acknowledge that. This debate is actually about sovereignty, scrutiny and whether the Government should be handing Brussels a blank cheque to set policy in areas where we still have the right to decide for ourselves. Until yesterday, four motions were due to be debated. That number changed when the motion on the EU returns regulation was suddenly withdrawn.”
“I thank the Minister of State for the update and for accepting the amendment. It is important for many people who may be watching this debate and for the many families who have been through this. Some families in the House may never have spoken out about such things. I also thank him for the update on the plan in the programme for Government because I know what it is like for a child to have to go through the courts system, including preparing to testify and do all of those things. It is one of the most harrowing experiences for children have to go through. I am delighted that there will be more supports for children, including a focus on them and how to support them through those systems. I again thank the Minister of State.”
“I am really thankful to the cross-party group for giving me this opportunity, and for giving that seven-year-old little girl a voice, the chance to share her story and the chance to stand up for all the other young children out there who are living in these homes at this time. I thank the Minister of State for accepting this amendment.”
“This amendment for me is personal but equally, it is personal to a lot of children, families and mothers and men, who also experience domestic violence, to make sure that it is an aggravating factor. We were never hurt physically but emotionally we were, and we carry those scars. That does need to be an aggravating factor when it comes to sentencing somebody who is getting sentenced for domestic violence because I will still carry those scars with me for the rest of my life, and the only thing I can do to play my part in fixing this is to end it with me and try not to pass it down to future generations of children I might have.”
“After two decades of living in that shame and fear that people would know what had happened, I finally then was able to get help therapeutically, not for a want but more for a need because as a therapist you have to be able to help yourself before you can help others. It was the first time that I had gone to my therapist. A few months after I had met him, he asked me what I thought he thought of me. I said I thought he thought I would be strong, because that is what I have always had all my life: "You are so strong. How do you do it?" He said, "Actually, when I first met you, you looked so fragile that if I was to touch you, you would fall apart", and for the first time in my life, somebody saw me. Somebody saw what I had been through. Somebody saw the trauma it had caused.”
“Stuff like that carried through to me because I am very fixated, even now, about cleanliness and having everything perfect. That is still with me today and that will be with me forever. The shame I carried was really difficult in my formative and teenage years and into adulthood. It shaped how I trusted people and how I saw things. It makes you hypervigilant to every situation, which is really sad because it makes you untrusting even of love. You see everything as danger and you know how to read people, and that is not a great thing. I was always a woman before I was ever a child. I always wanted to just be a child, and that was not afforded to me, unfortunately.”
“The perpetrator never carries the shame when they commit an act of violence against somebody. The shame is always given to the victim, and that shame gets passed on. For me, it shaped how I saw the world and how I trusted people in regard to the most minute things in life. For two decades I lived in the shadow of that shame of what had happened, and it was incredibly difficult. As a child, you learn how to see signs and read people and understand, even from something as small as knowing the kind of mood he would be in by the way his foot would cross the threshold of the front door. I would understand that laughing sometimes or playing too loudly could be a trigger, or that if the house was not clean enough, that would mean my mother would get abuse.”
“We talked about intergenerational trauma and how that does not just affect the person who is the survivor but also boils down and filters through to different generations. As strong as my mother is, and she is a fantastic woman, she has endured quite a lot in her life. She was a victim of domestic abuse, but that domestic abuse does not stop with her because the trauma passed on through the generations to me and my sibling. I want to acknowledge that sometimes children of abuse are not factored into legislation. From the ages of four to seven, I lived in a home that was very violent. As a child, when you are developing through that stage, it shapes how you see the world, move through it and grow into that. Thankfully, my mother was able to get out of that situation but none of us got out unscathed, and that is the reality.”
“I move amendment No. 1: In page 3, between lines 20 and 21, to insert the following: “(1B) Where a child is present during the commission of an offence under subsection (1), this shall be considered an aggravating factor for the purposes of sentencing.”.”. It is lovely to have the Minister of State here today to take this. I thank the cross-party group for bringing this Bill forward. Sometimes people forget that before we ever became politicians or got into politics, we have lived lives and had experiences. That shapes how we see the world and how we are in society, how we act and how we move. For me, this amendment is very important because in the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the survivors of residential abuse.”
“I thank the Independent Group for bringing forward this Bill and the Minister for accepting our amendment to put a timeframe around the provision of care. We heard at the health committee about the horrors that occurred in respect of CHI. Many of us are on the committee. We know what has happened. I echo what Senator Clonan said, that the time for action is now. We have done a lot of talking and there are a lot of reviews and reports. I am sure more things will come out, but this is a really welcome step in order that children and teenagers in the health system get the care they deserve and need and that the action is being taken. I commend all Senators in the Independent Group on bringing this forward, Senator McDowell on pushing it through and the Department on accepting the Bill.”
“Before we move on to the group spokespersons, I welcome the Clonakilty women's shed, who are guests with the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan. They are most welcome to the House. I hope they enjoy their day. We will now move on to the group spokespersons and start with Fianna Fáil's Senator Blaney.”
“Do we believe that the private market should be the default for elder care or that dignity in later life should be guaranteed publicly? As a State, we have a moral and legal obligation to those in care. At present, we are failing on both. We cannot continue to speak about dignity and compassion while outsourcing care to underregulated, profit-driven providers. The time for reviews and reports is over. Action is long overdue.”
“The privatisation of nursing home care has led to a patchwork system in which the standard of care is often determined by your postcode, your provider or your ability to pay. This is not a care system but a market, and markets do not protect people. Regulation does protect people but only if it is robust, independent and backed by political will. The State is funding private care but failing to hold it properly accountable. In HIQA, we have a regulator that is supposed to be a safety net but last week we saw that there clearly were many holes in that net. After Leas Cross, we were told "Never again". That was 20 years ago but here we are again. This about more than just governance; it is about values. Do we value our older people enough to protect them with strong public services, proper staffing ratios and real accountability?”
“However, HIQA is advocating for more powers to enforce rules. Which is it? Is the Minister of State seriously saying that the only way families can get justice or for care homes to be closed is to drag people through the courts? We heard about homes where staffing shortages were so severe that residents were left without timely care and basic hygiene was not maintained. I reiterate that provision was not made for the basic hygiene of these residents. Safeguarding concerns were raised but they were not acted upon swiftly and families were stonewalled when they tried to raise the alarm. What does the State think of the older generation if they cannot even have their basic needs met or a dignified way to live in their remaining years?”
“They represent residents at risk, families living in fear and staff under pressure in a system that is failing from the top down. Despite this, we continue down the path of privatising care, handing over the welfare of our most vulnerable citizens to private operators, many of which are driven by profit and not by care. How can the State genuinely claim to exercise meaningful oversight when it has outsourced the majority of this responsibility to the private sector? How can HIQA hold providers accountable when it is constrained by limited powers and its inspections are often focused more on compliance checklists than on the residents and their lived experience? Last week, the Minister of State appeared before the health committee and stated that HIQA had powers through the courts system.”
“In his opening statement, the Minister of State said there were a lot of nursing homes and care homes that did great work, and I agree with him. We cannot tar every single nursing home with the same brush because there are really hardworking people out there doing good work. However, last week, the Oireachtas health committee was presented with a deeply unsettling picture of how the State treated its older people and how little we had learned from the shame of the Leas Cross scandal 20 years ago. We were told that 95 nursing homes were under review by HIQA after serious concerns were raised. Of these, 52 were HSE-run centres, one was a stand-alone home funded by the HSE and 42 were private facilities, 23 of which were stand-alone homes. These numbers are not just statistics.”
“Meanwhile, the Government’s oral health policy, Smile agus Sláinte, is gathering dust, promised reforms to dental treatment services are delayed, the dentists Bill is missing and a dental school in UCC to tackle workforce shortages is paused. Oral health is healthcare, pain is pain, and neglect is neglect. That is the Minister of State’s responsibility. Our children deserve better, and our families deserve even more.”
“His family were told they could be waiting ten years for dental care, and their only option was to pay €2,500. There is also the story of a constituent of mine, a young woman who has been a patient at Cork dental hospital for more than ten years due to an unusual case of supernumerary teeth. Because of the Covid pandemic, she was not able to be seen. When she did get her X-ray, it was found she has an extremely rare case of tooth resorption affecting four to five of her teeth, which can fall out at any time, and the cost of that is €10,000. What kind of State allows that? This is not isolated, as we have heard. Families across the country are being forced to go private or go without, based not on clinical need but their ability to pay.”
“Last year, more than 100,000 children missed out on the basic dental health screenings they were entitled to. These screenings are meant to happen in second, fourth and sixth classes, which are critical development stages. Delaying them means missing signs of disease, delaying intervention and preventing suffering. At the same time, the number of dentists serving medical card holders has drastically been slashed. When it comes to children with additional needs, the system is even more broken. The HSE does not collect data on special care patients. Many of them are waiting two years or longer for treatment under general anaesthetic. Take the case of Tiernan Power Murphy, a six-year-old autistic boy who was in severe dental pain. He needed to have three teeth removed.”
“I move amendment No. 1: To delete all words after "Seanad Éireann" and substitute the following: “: - resolves that section 8 of the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act 2009 (No. 32 of 2009) shall continue in operation for the period beginning on 30th June, 2025 and ending on 29th June, 2026; and - calls on the Minister for Justice to bring forward legislation to give effect to the recommendations of the Independent Review Group without further delay.”.”
“That is the reason Sinn Féin is tabling amendments calling on the Minister to finally bring forward legislation based on the recommendations without further delay. This is not a call for leniency on crime, but a call for clarity, accountability and modern principled governance. It is time to end the cycle of delay and to do what we should have done years ago, which is to honour the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement and replace these emergency laws with a fair, effective and rights-based alternative.”
“This discussion does not happen in a vacuum. Communities across this State are grappling with some serious challenges relating to crime and antisocial behaviour. Garda numbers are down across the board, in particular in community roles and road policing. The absence of community policing and youth diversion are real problems that have gone unaddressed. These failures have allowed young people, especially those from disadvantaged areas, to become vulnerable to organised crime from a young age. They are being preyed upon by drug gangs as runners or pulled into cycles of violence and addiction, all while the State stands back. We all know it is true that we need more gardaí, but we also need investment in communities, youth services, diversion programmes, housing, mental health and education. Emergency laws will not solve any of that.”
“We support strong and effective tools to combat organised crime, but we also support a functioning, independent and fair criminal justice system, one that is grounded in the Constitution and the human rights standards that Ireland claims to uphold. If the threat of jury intimidation is the justification for non-jury trials, then why has there been so little action to protect jurors? The Law Reform Commission proposed concrete steps, namely, ending the daily roll call of jurors in open court, restricting public access to jury lists and criminalising jury tampering as a stand-alone offence. Sinn Féin made these proposals in our submission to the review group, yet none of these reforms have been enacted. We are left with a Government that is more comfortable renewing outdated laws than doing the hard work to reform them.”
“Yet, instead of decisive legislative action, what we get is another promise that proposals will be brought in due course. Communities do not live on due course. In the meantime, we continue to rely on emergency powers, non-jury courts and legislation that belongs in the archives and not on our Statute Book. We in Sinn Féin have been clear and consistent. Since 2020, we have abstained on these annual motions, not because we do not recognise the serious challenges proposed by organised crime but because we believe those challenges require modern, rights-compliant legislation that protects both public safety and civil liberties.”
“It is deeply disappointing that after the publication of the latest independent review of the Offences against the State Act, the Government is, once again, seeking to renew these outdated provisions, not because it is the right thing to do but because it has failed to bring forward new legislation based on the review's recommendations. The independent review group made clear and reasonable recommendations. The majority call for a complete abolition of the Offences against the State Act and for its replacement with a non-jury system that meets human rights standards, one where it is the courts and not the Director of Public Prosecutions that decide whether a non-jury trial is warranted, and only when there is a real and present danger to a jury.”
“It is almost 90 years since the Offences Against the State Act was first introduced in 1939. It was born out of a context that no longer reflects the Ireland we live in today. It was a time of constitutional transition and genuine national emergency. The Ireland of 2025 is not the Ireland of 1939 and we cannot continue to pretend otherwise, yet here we are again, for the 26th consecutive year since the Good Friday Agreement, renewing emergency legislation that should have been dismantled and replaced long ago. We were promised reform. The Good Friday Agreement explicitly called for a review, with a view to dispensing with those elements that are no longer required. The reviews have happened numerous times but what do we have to show for them only more delays and more dragging of the feet by the Government.”
“I move amendment No. 1: To delete all words after "Seanad Éireann" and substitute the following: “: - resolves that sections 2 and 4, 6 to 12, 14 and 17 of the Offences against the State (Amendment) Act 1998 (No. 39 of 1998) shall continue in operation for the period beginning on 30th June, 2025 and ending on 29th June 2026; and - calls on the Minister for Justice to bring forward legislation to give effect to the recommendations of the Independent Review Group without further delay.”.”
“Their demands are modest - decent pay, job stability and access to basic protections – but now we are hitting a bureaucratic brick wall. Parliamentary questions on this issue have been disallowed because we are told it is not the Minister’s responsibility but a letter received by the workers says it is not the commission’s responsibility either. Who is responsible? We need answers and they need answers. The Houses of the Oireachtas Commission does not meet again until 9 July. Meanwhile these workers are stuck underpaid, undervalued and passed from pillar to post. We say we all stand with workers; these are our workers, so let us act like it.”
“It is frankly embarrassing that we are having a discussion again about workers who make our democracy visible and audible to the public and yet are treated as second-class citizens in the very building where they serve. These skilled professionals are paid half the industry rate with no pension, no healthcare and no job security. They get their shifts at short notice and are often left without an income during recess. Some are on social welfare between sittings. It is a two-tiered system which we would not tolerate anywhere else. What is worse is that public money is being funnelled into a private contract where profit is being prioritised over fairness. This needs immediate intervention. There has been strong and amicable cross-party support to fix this and many of us have spoken directly with the workers.”
“I thank the Minister of State. I would love the Minister for Health to come to me directly on this issue. This case highlights that the person in question has had three different medical professionals saying she does not need to be there and can opt out because there is no need for it. It is causing her trauma. As the Minister of State said, regarding tissue perhaps being left over, etc., this person has none of that. Everything has been removed. It is very traumatising for her every time to have to prove she has actually undergone this traumatic experience. It is not good enough. I would really welcome a response from the Minister for Health on this issue.”
“This policy is not rooted in patient care. It is rooted in paternalism. It reflects a broader culture of mistrust and a lack of agency for women in how their healthcare is managed. I ask for this policy to be reviewed urgently. Women who have undergone a total hysterectomy and have sufficient medical evidence must be able to opt out of the CervicalCheck register without further invasive procedures or bureaucratic barriers.”
“Despite this, the national screening service insists she undergoes yet another pelvic examination and a GP informed submission to confirm, once again, that she does not require screening. This is not only medically unnecessary but deeply traumatising. Sarah is someone who was failed by CervicalCheck in the past. She had three smears between 2016 and 2019, all of which were marked normal despite being symptomatic. Her pathology report following surgery revealed abnormal cell growth that had been entirely missed. She trusted the system once and it failed her. Now, instead of recognising the trauma that it caused, the system is forcing her to relive and all to be believed about her own body. Why is a woman not allowed to make the decision for herself? Why is a signed declaration or existing medical evidence not enough?”
“I am here today to raise a matter that speaks to bodily autonomy, trauma-informed care and basic respect for women who have gone through far too much. I refer to the case of Sarah, a woman who underwent a radical hysterectomy in 2019. Her uterus, cervix, ovaries, Fallopian tubes and surrounding tissue were all removed. She has been medically confirmed not by one but by three different doctors as no longer requiring cervical screening. These include the surgeon who carried out her operation in London, her gynaecological oncologist here in Ireland and her own GP. Yet five years later, Sarah remains unable to opt out of the CervicalCheck register. She has asked repeatedly to be removed, at first providing medical grounds and documentation and later simply requesting to opt out.”
“They were good and practical amendments. The amendments we suggested were not rhetorical. They are required if this legislation is to be worthy of the people it claims to serve. We have heard the phrase "lessons learned" more times than I can count, but learning requires change. Otherwise, it is just performance. What good is this redress scheme that retraumatises survivors by asking them to prove again that their pain is real? What good is a support system that only supports the few? What good is an apology when it comes with conditions? This is not about perfecting the past; it is about correcting the present so that future generations are not left wondering why the State stopped short again. Survivors do not need our pity; they need our partnership. This means passing a Bill that sees them fully and not selectively.”
“It says that if a person was not in the building, he or she does not count. Trauma does not follow legal boundaries. Rather, it follows people. I want to be clear that I welcome any progress this Bill provides on recognition to survivors. However, we should not confuse a step forward with a finished journey. This Bill does not go far enough. It does not treat survivors who have lived abroad and those who have lived here equally. It does not ensure automatic access to healthcare supports. It does not acknowledge the unpaid labour that survivors gave in these institutions. It certainly does not recognise the harm done to the children of the survivors - the second generation - who grew up in homes marked by absence, silence and unprocessed grief. We in Sinn Féin tabled many amendments, many of which were stricken out.”
“I also support Senator Stephenson's amendment on supports for survivors of institutional abuse. There are moments in this Chamber when we are called, not just to legislate, but to listen to those whose lives have been shaped by decisions made in rooms like this. Last week, I spoke about a woman from my constituency. I will not repeat her story today. The point is not her pain, but the lesson we take from it. In its current form, the Bill does not go half as far as it needs to. What the woman's story and countless similar stories have shown is that the impact of the institutional abuse in Ireland did not end at the gates or with the reports that were published. The trauma echoed into families, futures and generations. The Bill creates a narrow frame as to who qualifies and who does not, who was harmed and who was not.”
“Críochnóidh mé leis seo a rá; ní gá dúinn an roth a chumadh arís. Tá a fhios ag pobail cad a oibríonn cheana féin. Tá siad ag coinneáil rudaí le chéile in ainneoin an Stáit, ní mar gheall air. Níl siad ag iarraidh ach tacaíocht, meas agus deis chothrom le todhchaí a thógáil. An bhfuil an méid sin á lorg acu i ndáiríre?”
“We need targeted investment in Gaeltacht housing, incentives for young families to remain or return, and planning reforms that empower communities to grow sustainably while preserving the Irish language. The Gaeltacht is not a museum. It is a living, breathing part of who we are and it deserves a whole lot more than tokenism. While many housing decisions rest with another Department, the Minister has a central role to play in shaping the planning framework, delivering serviced land, supporting community infrastructure and bringing real ambition to the next rural strategy. Rural Ireland is crying out for action, not another glossy document filled with photo ops and vague aspirations. Without urgent intervention, the managed decline of rural Ireland will not just continue but will become official Government policy.”
“All those aspects that have been mentioned here today are the essential infrastructure for modern life in rural Ireland. The decline in the Gaeltacht is very alarming. We keep saying we are investing so much in the Gaeltacht and that all this is happening but the reality for people living in the Gaeltacht is very different from what we are hearing on TV and reading in the papers. These communities not only face the same lack of services and housing as elsewhere in rural Ireland but also carry the responsibility of preserving our native language and culture. Instead of protecting and nurturing them, the Government is letting them slip away. The failure to support Gaeltacht housing, education through Irish and community-led cultural initiatives is not just policy failure. It is a betrayal of our identity.”
“They are choices to underfund infrastructure, to let local transport routes wither, to allow GPs to vanish without replacement, to close over 160 post offices and to enforce planning restrictions that make it nearly impossible for young people to build homes in their own towns and villages. What we are watching is the slow erosion of rural Ireland, and the Government is watching it happen. What we need is affordable homes in rural towns and villages; serviced sites for self-builds, so that people can build homes in the areas they grew up in; a planning system that actually reflects the needs of rural families, not one-size-fits-all bureaucracy designed around urban priorities; and investment in GP services, local transport, childcare and broadband.”
“In fact, there are large towns in this country with no dedicated community or family resource centres at all. This is not a policy oversight; it is an indictment of Government inaction and indifference stretching back decades. It is not just the voluntary sector that is feeling the strain. Rural Ireland is being managed into decline, piece by piece, decision by decision, through deliberate neglect, urban-centric policies and a failure to tackle the issues that matter most. Rural communities have been in decline for decades, and this decline is not an accident. It is the result of choices made in this Chamber and in Government Buildings.”
“I thank the Cathaoirleach. Community is the bedrock of Irish society. It sustains us, strengthens us and gives meaning to our lives. In times of crisis and calm, it is our communities, and the people who hold them together, who provide the care, connection and resilience that this State often fails to deliver. Yet, the very sector that sustains us, the community and voluntary sector, is chronically underfunded, undervalued and underappreciated. This Government is happy to rely on community groups to fill in the gaps left by public services but refuses to resource them adequately. Investment in community infrastructure, in local halls, youth centres, family resource centres, men’s sheds and women’s groups, has simply not kept pace with demand.”
“This is not just a rural issue. It is a national failure of planning and priority. We talk a lot about prevention and early intervention but without consistent core funding for youth work we are setting up our young people to have problems in future, such as mental health issues, substance abuse and, sometimes, contributing to antisocial behaviour. Will the Minister for Children, Equality and Disability come to the House to set out how she will properly fund and expand youth services, especially in areas that are chronically underserved? Youth work does change lives but only if we support it.”
“I will raise an issue I raised previously in the House: greater investment in youth work and youth services. Over the years, I have had the privilege of working with youth workers on the ground. I have seen the impact they can have in offering guidance, support and a safe place for young people to just be themselves. They are not just community leaders They are often a lifeline for young people who are facing isolation, mental health struggles or risky situations. Despite their dedication, they are being asked to do more with less and are being underfunded, overstretched and undervalued. In many rural areas, there are no structured youth services at all. Young people are falling through the cracks simply because of where they live. There is no access to diversion projects, youth cafés or safe spaces to gather.”
“I commend Senator Flynn and the Civil Engagement Group for tabling the Bill and I urge that the Bill be passed through the House.”
“I thank the Minister of State for attending. We have mentioned that words matter. We would like to support Senator Flynn and the Civil Engagement Group on the Bill. It is timely and very much needed. This is more about semantics and the truth. It is calling out these crimes for exactly what they are. It is centring the experience around the victim and not framing it for the perpetrator. The Bill is about protecting children. It is about reframing the public understanding of abuse, reinforcing that these crimes are not about desire or sex, but about power, violence and exploitation. While changing the law will not undo the harm to the children who have suffered exploitation, it will help us to build a legal and cultural landscape where these crimes are named clearly, prosecuted fully and never minimised through euphemism.”
“Where is the support for people like the woman to whom I refer, who endured an upbringing shaped entirely by institutional trauma without ever setting foot in the institution herself? Who is the Government protecting? It is not the survivors. It is certainly not their children or those who bear the burden of Ireland's unresolved past. To the woman whose words I carried here with me today, I want to say that you were never too big for that swing. You should have had the doll of your own and you deserve every hug that you never got. We can never fully undo the past, and we have acknowledged that today. What we can decide right now is whether to compound the harm that was done or begin to finally heal it.”
“To the survivors living abroad, many of whom were forced to emigrate as a direct consequence of their institutional trauma, it offers once-off payments, with, as Senator Tully said, no regard for inflation, health needs or the reality of an ageing population with sometimes no family or State support. To the survivors still here in Ireland, it offers a maze of exclusions and conditions while still shielding religious orders from their full financial obligations. What about the children of the survivors, the ones who inherited the trauma, who were raised in silence and stoicism, who never received the love their parents never learned to give? Where is their acknowledgement in this?”