PQ: Topical Issue Debate: Child Protection Issues
Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin: I thank the Ceann Comhairle for affording me the opportunity to raise the topic with my colleagues and I thank the Minister for Justice and Equality for being here in person. I think the Minister will agree with all of us that this is an unbelievably appalling scenario that has played out in front of our eyes in the past number of days. In the short amount of time allotted to me, I wish to make two main points.
The first relates to the independence of the inquiry that needs to take place and what happens to the report when it is given to the Ombudsman for Children. Will it be published and will we be able to dig deep into the reasons this was allowed to happen? I am willing to accept the bona fides of the gardaí and the HSE to a certain extent. I hope the Minister will agree with me that what is really at the core of this episode and circus is a pure, raw, naked and poisonous racism that lies at the heart of Irish society. This goes across the political system and into journalism, the gardaí and the HSE. We are willing to believe the worst of some of the communities that live in this land, most notably the Roma and Traveller communities. There are journalists and politicians who will not be involved in these investigations and will probably not appear in whatever report is produced on this situation who have significant questions to answer about the climate of fear and the undermining and dehumanising of communities that is taking place day in, day out in daily newspapers and our television screens that makes people in this country believe the worst of the Roma and Traveller communities and many other communities in this State. I will read out a line from a journalist from the Irish Independent who wrote a scurrilous piece about the Roma community recently. I must apologise for my language. The journalist discussed an encounter with a member of the Roma community. The article included the line “cue the usual bullshit you get from the Roma any time you challenge them – lots of spitting and evil-eye finger pointing”. The article went on to state that:
“But if we allow the Roma, or the indigenous junkies, to completely sap our native instinct to dip into our pocket when we see someone who is in a bad way then we won’t just have lost one of the better aspects of our nature. We shall have given it away.”
Acting Chairman (Deputy Joe O’Reilly): I have indulged the Deputy but his time is up.
Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin: I understand that my time is short and my colleagues want to come in. My two points relate to the independent nature of the investigation but also the responsibility of journalistic and political representatives to whom I may refer afterwards who are at the heart of this racism that is at the heart of this problem.
Deputy Clare Daly: The Tánaiste advised us this morning that we cannot jump to conclusions in respect of these horrendous cases and I agree. That said, the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence presented is that racial profiling occurred and these children were taken from their parents for one reason only – they were Roma and did not look like their parents. I sincerely believe that if they had been the adopted Vietnamese children of white parents, there is no way this would have happened. Both the Minister on the radio this morning and the Tánaiste have attempted to downplay the seriousness of what has happened here on the basis of the failure of the State to act in previous cases of concern regarding child welfare. It is clear that the State did fail previously and in other instances behaved in an over-the-top manner but the reality is that procedures have been put in place to deal with precisely these scenarios. In this case, the procedures were not followed. All the procedures say that the children should remain with their parents except in very exceptional circumstances but in this case, the last resort became the first option. This has been and will be deeply traumatic for the children and parents involved. An Irish pensioner who tearfully contacted my office this morning had been taken into care decades ago and still lives with that trauma.
Will the Minister give an unreserved apology to the families at the heart of this debacle? Will he commit to an independent investigation into what happened? Can he comment on the coincidence that his Department has been criticised by the EU for its lack of progress on Roma and Traveller integration? Is it not in some way culpable?
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