The Senator is over time. I call Senator Keane.

I agree with all those who spoke about St. Patrick's Institution and called for a debate in the House. It is being closed down and something is being done about it. We have been years and years listening to issues concerning St. Patrick's Institution. I pay tribute to Judge Michael Reilly who, night time, day time and every hour of the day, went into the prison when he was not expected. We know of his inspection reports.

A point was made about the delay in the report. The report was available but the Minister had said, and repeated on radio this morning, that he was ill himself, which was one of the reasons, and we have to take such matters into consideration. There was another glitch in that the computer system broke down at the time the report was due. Fair is fair. It was mentioned on the radio, so I am not telling any secrets of State or anything like that. While I did not stand up to raise that issue, it is very important and we should raise it because many of the residents of St. Patrick's Institution deserve that.

I stood up to raise the issue of the report on local government, Putting People First. I was not present in the House yesterday because, as spokesperson on local government, I was at the launch of this important report. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government must be commended for ensuring we have, for the first time in history, a real overhaul of local government which is going to put the people first. It does and we will. I hope I will be able to come back in a few years and say it did what it said on the tin and put the people first.

I have two questions.

Is the Senator supporting the call yesterday for a debate?

Yes, but some issues were not mentioned. As it was such an important issue and I wanted to see what was said, I listened to the debate on playback. It was not mentioned that there is a new facility in the report that provides for a citizens' assembly and participative community-----

We are not discussing the report today.

I ask the Leader-----

Senators sought a debate. Are you supporting that call?

Yes; I call for an early debate. I also ask that we have a date for the announcement of the citizens' assembly, as this is not mentioned in the report.

I also support the call for further discussion and a debate about Judge Michael Reilly's very damning report. We see in this report the revisiting of some of the tragic themes from the story of the abuse of young people in Ireland. We hear about institutional defensiveness in terms of the State's response and its claims that these reports were not to be believed, the general non-belief and attitude of disbelief towards young people who make claims, the further victimisation of young people who have already been abused, which is something we have heard before, and, in particular, the targeting of children who are already vulnerable.

It seems very hard to credit that a State institution could be responsible for such neglect and such blatant cynicism about the welfare of young people, and that this could go on in the 21st century. It is hard to credit that a judge preparing a report did not believe in the integrity of the statistics about the provision of education and schooling in terms of teacher and prisoner attendances for schooling and, therefore, brought in his own experts to test that.

How can it be that we have a State institution where prison gangs are running riot, where a drug problem is rife and where there is not a basic duty of care or an attitude of care, more importantly, being shown towards young people? It can only be because there is a cultural lack of sympathy towards these children, these young people, because they are offenders. That is precisely when we must have high standards. It is precisely when the people in one's care are hard to love or make life difficult for themselves that we have to have high standards and that we should not be allowed to drop our standards in the way people are treated. It is important that we get a chance to ask some very hard questions in this House and I hope we can have a debate on this report.