Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for allowing me to raise this matter. Arising from what occurred yesterday, and the newspaper reports of the events that took place, I do not believe that a three member internal review group, chaired by a former health board official, composed of health board employees is an appropriate group to conduct an inquiry into the events that occurred in this matter in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Those events resulted in the Central Criminal Court sentencing a man yesterday to a total of 238 years in prison for 26 representative counts, an extraordinary sentence unmatched in the history of the State. After a four-day hearing that man admitted the commission of crimes of rape, buggery and indecent assault on his three children. As the judge ordered that the sentences run concurrently the maximum period of imprisonment that man will serve is 12 years and possibly with good behaviour as little as nine years.
The case disclosed a litany of barbaric physical and sexual violence that began in 1976 and continued until 1993. Despite the fact that the convicted man's son was taken into care in 1983 no criminal prosecution followed the making of a care order. From information now publicly available, it seems that despite concerns about the man's two daughters, the child care professionals of the health board concerned essentially washed their hands of this family in 1984 due to difficulties experienced in dealing with the parents. We are told that at case conferences in 1983 attended by the family's general practitioner, medical staff, social workers and on one occasion by a garda, the general conclusion was that enough evidence was not available to take the children into care. That has been explained in newspaper reports on the basis that the professionals involved believed the culture of the time in terms of child abuse awareness was not in their favour. That is entirely untrue.
During the 1981-82 period two cases were publicised in this country in which children died as a result of parental abuse and assault. In 1982 as Fine Gael spokesperson on law reform I highlighted those cases in this House, the inadequacies in our child care system exposed by them and the need for appropriate action to be taken to protect children at risk. It seems that at the very time the then Minister for Health, Deputy Woods, was giving assurances to this House that such action had been taken the children who were the tragic victims of that house of horrors in the west over which their father ruled were being subjected daily to appalling abuse and degradation. The man's two daughters continued to be abused for a further decade.
Speeches are frequently made in this House about our concern for children. I am concerned that the legal regime in place today is little different from that operating in 1982. Much of the new protection which should be afforded to children remains locked into a legal twilight zone, not yet having been brought into force. I have been given assurances by a succession of Ministers for Health over a 15-year period that appropriate action has been or is being taken. Even today as this most recent reported case is discussed in this House children are being physically and sexually abused behind closed doors. How many will continue to be abused in the weeks ahead? How many more children will fall victim not only to parental abuse but to health board failures and anachronistic laws?
There should be a totally independent inquiry into the conduct of the health board in the area in which those three children were subjected to 17 years of sexual and physical assault. The findings and recommendations of such an inquiry should be fully published. Such an inquiry should state the reason care orders were not sought and obtained in respect of all three children at an early stage and, in particular, it should clarify whether guidelines published by the Department of Health in the early 1980s were fully and properly followed by the health board concerned. The independent inquiry should also extend to the Garda who should report fully on the reason a prosecution was not brought earlier than the present one, particularly after the son was taken into care in 1983. That is not something which appears to be within the remit of the current internal review group. We must ensure that not only the legislation, but adequate social work personnel are in place to provide the maximum possible protection for all children at risk of such abuse.
I have been a Member of this House for more than 15 years. During all those years I have been raising a succession of tragic cases in which children have been physically and sexually assaulted and some where children have died at the hands of their parents. I am personally sick and tired of ministerial genuflections of concern and promises of action. While a full inquiry into the background of this case is required, it should not be seen as some type of political placebo. What the vulnerable children of this State need is political action, not political rhetoric or expressions of sympathy.
