Seanad Report: Mr Brendan Ryan (Lab) urged that the Minister for Foreign Affairs raise with the Vatican the case of a Croatian man who had been in the Artane industrial school as a child. Jimmy Walsh reports.
A column in The Irish Times yesterday disclosed how the man had written a letter, in Italian, to the Vatican in the 1950s, describing what had happened to him in "that awful place", said Mr Ryan.
When he later tried to get a copy of the letter from Rome "the Vatican, which is a separate State with which we have diplomatic relations - and I would like the Minister for Foreign Affairs to pursue this matter - has refused to give this now middle-aged man a copy of the letter he wrote, on the grounds that the archives are secret", said Mr Ryan.
"Now, I have heard so much about the new compassionate understanding of the question of child abuse, and I am suddenly presented with a spectacle of rigid bureaucracy," he added.
"I would invite our Minister for Foreign Affairs to raise the matter with the Vatican Secretary of State and say that all he wants is his own letter, which he can't remember because it was 50 years ago. At the very least, an institution that now claims to understand the enormity of what was done in it by some of its servants, to children, should respond with a bit of humanity."
Mr Paul Coghlan (FG) complied with a request by the Chair that he withdraw a remark he made when supporting a call that the Taoiseach come to the House to speak on Aer Lingus's future.
Agreeing that a courteous invitation should be extended to Mr Ahern, Mr Coghlan said he believed people wanted to hear the ventriloquist, not the dummy.
Mr Shane Ross (Ind) said he would hate to think they were being denied a debate because of differences between the Government parties on the issue. In the Dáil, the Taoiseach had attacked individuals for supposedly trying to enrich themselves. "Trying to make a few bob, in my language." Those attacked had not been there to defend themselves, while the Taoiseach was acting as the mouthpiece for airline's unions.
Mr Tim Dooley (FF) said Mr Ross had spoken of management making a few bob. "Well, we all saw the few bob associated with Eircom and what happened in that regard."
Mr John Minihan (PD), acting leader of the House, said a debate on Aer Lingus would be scheduled when time permitted. A difference of views could be healthy and people should not be over-reading this as divisions.
A compulsory pension contribution scheme may be introduced as part of the drive to provide an adequate, sustainable pension for all, if the voluntary approach fails to deliver the required increase in coverage, the House heard.
The Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mr Brennan, said 75 per cent of the State's workers did not have adequate pension provision. That situation could not be permitted to continue. Young people starting in employment would have to be required to take account of their pension needs. The PRSI system was compulsory.
"So, I don't think we can say that it's a principle that you cannot be required to provide a State pension for people. The issue for future generations and governments, and for this Government and myself, is whether you expand that, whether you roll that out, or whether you have a mixture.
"There is no single solution. There is the social insurance fund, there are the PRSAs, there is the National Pensions Reserve Fund and there are non-contributory pensions which come directly from the State.
"So, there are at least four mechanisms of providing pensions, and it's probably an integration of all these." This was an area on which he was working.
Fine Gael spokeswoman Ms Sheila Terry, urged that participation in private sector pension schemes be made optional.
Two senior officers of a large national union, one of whom was on the board of the Pensions Board, had recently advocated that there be child pensions, that the SSIAs be diverted into pension funds, and the mandatory adoption of the PRSAs.
She would have expected these people to be more interested in the interests of the workers and to seek the protection of their pensions rather than advocating these issues. Once again, she said, the unions seem to have been brain-washed by the industry.