The spectre of Michael Shine has hung over the town of Drogheda and the wider region for decades. Today is an important day for the hundreds of victims and survivors of this disgraced, convicted sex offender and former doctor. There is now a way forward through the recommendations of the scoping report published an hour ago. This is a day when we can say we are a step further along the road of truth and accountability and that we are a little closer to laying this ghost to rest.

Over 15 years ago, I made my very first contribution in the Dail on this issue. I chose my maiden speech in here to draw attention to the crimes of a man who abused hundreds, possibly thousands, of young men in my community. I made that contribution at a time when help and the hope that justice would ever be done was in very short supply. Over 15 years on and over 30 years since the courageous nurse and founder of Dignity4Patients, Bernadette Sullivan, put her neck on the line by reporting the mishandling of the first complaint against Shine, we now have a pledge to move towards a six phase commission of investigation, chaired by one person and to be run concurrently.

I wish to formally thank the Minister for Health, Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, her staff, Lorcan Staines and Gemma McLoughlin Burke who developed the report, the expert involvement of Maeve Lewis and Phil Scraton, Adrienne Reilly and her team at Dignity4Patients, but most of all the men who never let go and fought day and night with real dignity to be heard. As the Minister of Health said in her press statement alongside the report, "... their experiences have shaped the report and its recommendations ...".

The overwhelming emotion this morning among the men is one of relief; relief that they are being listened to. They are so used to having doors slammed in their faces. A door to truth and recovery and real restorative justice is now being opened by the State through the Government.

In the words of Dignity4Patients:

... [We are] very pleased that this has happened today. It is a historic moment in that ... finally there is something on the record going towards full vindication of all of the victims and survivors of convicted sex offender Michael Shine.

Many of these men, the victims and survivors, are friends of mine. They are people who I went to school with, played football with and hung around with. Deputy Joanna Byrne would be very familiar with many of them as would Deputy Butterly. I have said time and again that a spell in jail does not justice make.

Yes.

A light must be shone into the environment that allowed a prolific paedophile to operate within our public health service, with impunity and unchallenged for over 30 years. Questions have to be asked of the former North Eastern Health Board, the order that ran the Lourdes hospital, the Garda, the Medical Council, the DPP and other agencies which knew very well what was going on. The dogs in the street in Drogheda knew what Shine was doing to young boys and men and that is why a statutory inquiry is of critical importance.

I have two questions. Will the men, the Dignity4Patients group, be involved centrally in having the terms of reference with the Attorney General agreed?

Yes.

Will the Tánaiste commit providing stable and predictable core funding to the Dignity4Patients group to ensure it can continue to support men through this process?

Hear, hear.

Let me say "Yes" and "Yes" to two very clear questions. Let me acknowledge the Deputy's own advocacy, leadership and involvement in this issue for a long number of years and that of other Deputies from the area, including the Ministers, Deputies Byrne and McEntee, Deputy Butterly and many people across the political divide trying to desperately get a hearing for people who were being ignored, obstructed and, as Deputy Nash said, were having doors slammed in their faces. This is the second time this week in this House we have talked about the actions of vile, despicable paedophiles who were allowed to prey on innocent children and young men in this country.

I read the scoping inquiry report and before I came in today, I read the comments of the victim's group, of the survivor's group. The most powerful thing they said was that they feel "listened to" after decades of being ignored. Being ignored does not capture how despicably cruelly they were treated in terms of this. In fact, it is not that long ago I remember people making the point, not in this House, that there was no need at all for an inquiry in relation to this. I am really pleased we have gotten to this point.

I join the Deputy in thanking my colleague, the Minister for Health, for publishing the report of the scoping exercise into former surgeon Michael Shine. I also thank her for the engagement she has had with the group. I have been a very strong believer that there was a need for some form of inquiry. Michael Shine is a convicted sexual abuser. He carried out vile, despicable acts against boys and young men. He was described by the Court of Appeal as a "prolific sexual offender". I remember when I was Taoiseach engaging on this with the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and others and we asked for options to be prepared as to how we could take an inquiry forward. I am really pleased the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, moved forward on this as well.

I want to praise Lorcan Staines, the senior counsel, who conducted the scoping exercise. Quite frankly, in my experience in this House and in government, getting that chair right matters a hell of a lot. We appointed the right person and Lorcan Staines has been exemplary in how he has carried out this work. He met almost 75 victims and survivors as part of the process and he noted that they were middle-aged to elderly men from all walks of life in Drogheda and the surrounding areas. I acknowledge their bravery. The courage of the individuals who came forward to share their lived experience with the facilitator during that process cannot be easy. He detailed how allegations of abuse reported to him involved a broad range of ages, including reports of abuse when victims were children, teenagers or young adults. Allegations are reported as having occurred at the hospital, in Shine's private practice in Fair Street and in Shine's home, with the earliest allegation said to have occurred in 1964 and the latest in 1990. Victims were of the view that Shine's conduct throughout this, as the Deputy said, was a matter of public knowledge.

Clearly, there is a need to investigate this fully and we now have a model and a way forward, thanks to the work of Lorcan Staines and to the bravery and courage of the men, the neighbours and the friends of the Deputy's, for all they have done to get us to this point.

I thank the Tánaiste for his personal interest in this over the years and that of the Taoiseach as well. I acknowledge the work the Minister, Deputy McEntee, has done in representing her constituents over the years who have been affected by the actions of this despicable man, who was convicted a number of years ago of a number of criminal offences but, as I have repeatedly said, a spell in jail does not justice make.

No.

We need to shine a light into the dark recesses of our society and into the agencies and organisations that allowed the actions of this prolific paedophile to continue unchallenged for over 30 years.

I was very moved when I read the report this morning and the initial passage where Lorcan Staines said that "a further State response is required." That line is the line for which we have all been waiting for 30 years after a number of failed attempts and State-backed initiatives to address many of these issues. There is a novel way forward here that is being proposed. It is interesting and I hope it will work. I repeat that I want to see, as I know the Tánaiste does, the victims, survivors and the Dignity4Patients group centrally involved in helping to craft the terms of reference, based on the truism that nothing should be done for and with victims without them.

I thank Deputy Nash and agree with everything he says. I thank Dignity4Patients as well for the very structured and really constructive and helpful way it went about its engagement as well. The Deputy is right that Shine being sent to a prison cell, where he belongs, is justice in one part but it is nowhere near enough. We saw this again the other day in relation to Waterford. There is a case of who knew what, when and how could this abuse have been stopped. It went from 1964 to 1990, which is an extraordinarily long period of time.

I really think Lorcan Staines has done a very good job in trying to come up with what the Deputy correctly called a novel approach. Nobody wants a commission of investigation that goes on forever and ever. We want to try to get a structured way forward. I think what he is suggesting - I have not seen it before because it is novel - of six phases is a clever idea. Three of the phases should be independent document-based reviews, examining criminal complaints resulting in convictions, the response of the Medical Council and the circumstances in which Shine retired from the hospital. Phase 4 should be short and focused on current patient protection policies in Irish healthcare. Phase 5, really crucially, should be an independent truth and recovery process that should be victim-centered and non-adversarial and should run alongside that work.

Phase 6 should amount to a comprehensive investigation into the actions and events surrounding the abuse committed by Shine, followed by a report setting out, so far as the evidence permits, what was known, by whom and at what stage. It should examine the full extent to which relevant bodies receive complaints, information, warning signs, indications of risk, what actions they took, whether their actions were adequate and timely. He recommends that the publication of the Smith report be revisited only after full completion. We will now engage, as the Deputy suggests, and move forward.