The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said yesterday he was committed "to seeing it all through" where State measures to deal with the abuse of children in residential institutions were concerned.
He was giving evidence to the investigation committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday. Afterwards he was applauded by former residents of the institutions who attended the hearing.
He told the committee: "I think it has to be said that the test of a true democracy is to be found in how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members.
"Modern Ireland has many brave but vulnerable survivors of childhood abuse, whose young lives were shattered by terrible wrongs that were perpetrated upon them."
He continued: "The reality is that much of the abuse that occurred in the past was directed towards children who were pupils in residential institutions that were regulated and supervised by the State."
He had become aware of the abuse issue for the first time in the 1990s, and it was why in 1997 he changed the Department of Health to the Department of Health and Children, where resources and modern legislation had been put in place for the protection of children.
"I think what we are dealing with today was part of the past that we had to put right before we can truly say that we have done this work. That is why I have taken a personal interest in this."
Explaining his decision to apologise on May 11th, 1999, on behalf of the Irish people to those who had been in the institutions, he said that for a number of years previously the issue had been coming into the public forum through the media, litigation and freedom of information requests.
More importantly, there were the victims and representatives of groups of victims who were either calling on politicians, "me included, asking us to deal with the issue".
In early 1998, he and the then minister for education, Mr Martin, had discussions on the matter, and Mr Martin raised it at Cabinet in early March that year.
A Cabinet sub-committee was set up, and a working group made up of secretaries general of the Departments of Health and Children, Education and his own Department. It presented a report to the Cabinet in April 1999, and all its recommendations were accepted. These included setting up the commission itself, adjustments to the statute of limitations and the setting up of a national counselling service.
He remembered the day he decided a public apology should be made. It was early 1999, and he met a large group of former residents in the Sycamore Rooms at Government Buildings.
"To say people were hurt would be a gross underestimation of how people felt. They were all adults. These issues had happened 20, 30 or 40 years earlier in their lives, and practically every one of them was crying. Not a pretty sight. That is when we made the decision that we would try to deal with this in as upfront and honest way as we could."
That, he said, was the history of the apology.
The State should have done better by the residents when they were children. "There were reasons why it didn't, but they weren't justifiable in our view. While times were different...we still felt in this case we had left a section of our community, who were vulnerable, exposed in a way that would affect their lives."
Redress had not been a big part of the debate, but there was no problem about it. "We knew it was part of the equation." However, the Government was anxious to have a redress scheme that "just wasn't more torture".
