Sir, - I have been directed by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr John O'Donoghue TD, to refer to Fintan O'Toole's column of December 10th, in which he expresses concern about "how quickly wild hyperbole can be transmuted in public discourse into accepted reality". But he himself succumbs to the same hyperbole when writing, a few paragraphs down the column, about the Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Bill 1998. Some examples:
He suggests that the Government produced it, which it did not: it is a Private Member's Bill. The Government has supported the principle of the Bill and - as the record of the Dail shows - contributed extensively to the Bill.
He claims that the Bill puts up new barriers to justice for victims of child abuse. It does precisely the opposite. The Bill actually proposes to defer for such victims the point from which the limitation period would normally start to run (usually the 18th birthday) to a time possibly well into adult life when the victim overcomes the psychological disability which prevented him or her from being able to take steps to deal with the issue. In other words, it will remove a legal protection which defendants in sex abuse cases have hitherto always enjoyed - a protection which still stands in all other civil cases.
He purports to quote the expression "mentally aware", a phrase - and a concept - that occurs nowhere in the Bill or in Ministerial utterances. The awareness on the victim's part of the injury that has been caused is in fact the very root of the psychological disability that prevents victims from taking action earlier, and it is that psychological disability which the Bill addresses. Mr O'Toole's pseudo-quote is accordingly irrelevant as well as without meaning or source.
He ignores the fact that rather than take the more usual course of referring the highly complex question of limitation periods in child abuse cases to the Law Reform Commission, in its entirety, the Government has decided that we should proceed now with a change in the law as it relates to sexual abuse, and deal with the less clear-cut area of other forms of abuse when we have the benefit of the Commission's research and recommendations. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is committed - as the record of the House shows - to dealing promptly and pro-actively with the Commission's recommendations about non-sexual abuse cases, once available. There is nothing "scandalous" or "disgracefully minimal" about this approach. It wouldn't necessarily make for enlightened law-making to provide, in effect, that a civil action grounded on assault should automatically, and without qualification, be distinguished in law from all other forms of actionable loss or personal injury which might have occurred before a person's 18th birthday.
He asserts that the Government is "dodging the issue" of child abuse, but offers no evidence to support this claim: he cannot, because the facts say otherwise. The Minister can assure your readers that the Government's broad-based response to the issue of past child abuse continues to be as announced, and widely welcomed, last May. The Laffoy Commission's two interim reports to the Government are being met by the urgent development of the enabling legislation which they seek; funding has been provided to health boards for the expansion of counselling services to the adult victims of child abuse; and the other elements of the Government's package of responses to this issue are similarly well in hand.
At the initiative of the Government, the Bill now includes a provision for the application of the new disability rule to all future proceedings and proceedings current when the Bill is passed, irrespective of when the abuse took place. This is also the approach followed in another Private Member's Bill on the subject of childhood abuse. However, the Minister indicated in the Dail last week that he would further re-examine this aspect of the Bill before it comes to the Seanad, to see whether matters which have been the subject of certain past legal proceedings could be addressed in the Bill.
Any lawyer will confirm that the issues involved are extremely complex. The Minister is concerned to ensure that the atmosphere in which the issues generally are debated is not ill-informed and simplistic. Mr O'Toole might like to take a leaf out of his book. - Yours, etc.,
Tony Cotter, Press & Information Office, Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2.