Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-06-23 ============================================================ Holly Cairns (SD), Cork South-West I want to read into the record the testimonies of two women who were sexually abused by Leo Hickey, their principal in Dunderrow 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 on the lower part of the body of the girl beside me. Again, 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 about ten minutes. I remember wanting to get out to play before the break would be over ... 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. Leo Hickey was eventually convicted while the State managed to evade all responsibility. I spoke to Louise O'Keeffe 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 - women whose evidence helped secure his conviction - have been denied redress. Their testimony was good enough for the criminal court but somehow is not good enough for the State. It is unbelievable. In 2019, the Taoiseach stood on this side of the House and said that the O'Keeffe judgment demands that every child who experienced sexual abuse in a defective child protection framework in schools be compensated for that abuse. He also said that redress should not wait for the results of any commission of investigation. Survivors do not need another review, report or excuse. They need a Government willing to do what the Taoiseach himself called for. I have two questions. Does the Taoiseach recognise the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights and if so, will he commit to providing fair redress to all survivors without arbitrary barriers? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-23