Apology following the publication of the Report of the South East Commission of Investigation: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-14
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Ged Nash (LAB), Louth

As my colleague, Deputy Bacik, said, today is for you and about you. I hope that today marks an important milestone for you and a step on the road to a form of healing that has been denied to you all for far too long. If survivors in the Gallery will indulge me for a moment, it is serendipitous that on the day on which an apology is formally made to you in the Dáil for the wrongs the State has done to you, a report has gone to Cabinet in respect of a scoping exercise into the conduct of Michael Shine. It is important that today is about the process we are dealing with but I acknowledge the intensive work the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health have done in supporting the survivors and victims of Michael Shine, and that we will see progress, as I expect we will, at some point in the future.
It is a good thing that we are finally coming to terms with the challenges of our past in this country. Nothing will change the experience of the survivors of Kenneally or indeed anybody else but it is crucially important the State institutes processes that acknowledge wrong, that ensure, insofar as we can, that the State acknowledges that and works towards a better future, and that we learn from how the State and institutions that were involved in the form of abuse that was experienced in Waterford and elsewhere. We all need to acknowledge that and do better on behalf of all the citizens in this country. It is important that we do that and move on from that. I pay tribute on behalf of the Labour Party to all of you for your engagement in this process. I hope, as I said earlier, that some form of healing can emerge from this.

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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/2026-07-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-14