Before calling on Deputy Shatter to move the motion, I will make a brief statement for the guidance of Members. The motion makes specific reference to matters that were the subject of criminal proceedings and in regard to which further proceedings are expected. I remind Members that, under Standing Order 56, a matter should not be raised in an overt manner such that it appears to be an attempt by the Oireachtas to encroach on the functions of the court or a judicial tribunal, and that when permission to raise a matter has been granted, there will continue to be an onus on Members to avoid, if at all possible, comment which might in effect prejudice the outcome of proceedings. I ask Members to bear these points in mind when making their contributions.
Child Protection: Motion.
I move:
That Dáil Éireann:
expressing its serious concern at:
the shocking and disturbing revelations of neglect and physical and sexual abuse suffered by six children in Roscommon; and
the failure of the Western Health Board to appropriately intervene at an early stage;
calls on the Government to:
appoint an independent commission pursuant to the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004 to examine all of the family circumstances relating to the six Roscommon children whose mother was convicted of incest and other offences of child abuse and neglect in Roscommon Circuit Court on Wednesday, 19th January, 2009;
ensure that such investigation has specific regard to the actions and child protection practices and procedures of:
the former Western Health Board and the Health Service Executive;
all school and religious authorities and personnel who had contact with the children;
doctors and nurses who had contact with the children; and in addition
has regard to the actions, if any, of other relevant persons and organisations which affected the approach taken by the Western Health Board or who were in a position to report child neglect or abuse;
ensure that the terms of reference of the commission also require it to investigate the action taken by Government and more particularly by successive Ministers for Health and Children and Ministers for Children to ensure the effective implementation of the Children First Child Protection Guidelines of 1999, and to implement the outstanding relevant recommendations contained in the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the death of Kelly Fitzgerald, published by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Family in April 1996; and
ensure that the Minister for Health and Children and the Minister for Children both take all necessary and immediate action to ensure that all children at risk receive the protection to which they are entitled under our current law and that our Child Protection Guidelines are effectively and uniformly implemented throughout the State.
I propose to share time with Deputies Bannon and Crawford.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I bring to Members' attention a typographical error in the text of the motion. The reference to "19th January" should read "21st January". I understand this error will be corrected in tomorrow's Order Paper.
I regret that the Government has deemed fit to table an amendment to this motion rather than simply accepting it. Unfortunately, this fits into the general conduct of the Government in dealing with issues relating to children. In the context of the entire area of child care, I have watched with amazement the contribution made to date by the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, with responsibility for children, Deputy Barry Andrews. Before Christmas, the Minister of State called on John Magee, the Bishop of Cloyne, to resign in view of his failure to implement child protection guidelines.
The failings of Bishop Magee were confined to the Cloyne area, whereas the failings of the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, his predecessors at the Office of the Minister for Children, this Government and all Fianna Fáil-led Governments in the last 12 years in the child care area have impacted on the entirety of the country. Child protection guidelines have been in place since 1999. Prior to that, other guidelines were in place which were replaced by the 1999 guidelines. The reality is that Fianna Fáil-led Governments and a series of Ministers of State with responsibility for children have presided over the Office of the Minister for Children, along with a succession of Ministers for Health and Children presiding over the senior Department, in circumstances in which the 1999 guidelines have been in place but have not been observed. There is no uniformity of application of the guidelines throughout the State. If what happened in Cloyne justifies the Minister of State's call for the resignation of Bishop Magee, what has happened throughout the State in the child protection area justifies a call not only on the Minister of State and his predecessors to resign but on the entirety of the Government to do the same. It is the height of hypocrisy for this Minister of State in particular, who has shown unprecedented incompetence in this brief, to call on others to resign from their positions because of their failings.
The tragic case in Roscommon, affecting six children in the family in question, has shone a spotlight on the adequacies of our child care system. The need for an independent investigation into what occurred, under the Commissions of Investigations Act 2004, cannot be denied. There is a need to know exactly why these children were condemned to live, for a period of eight years from 1996 to the end of 2004, in circumstances in which no child should be obliged to live. The Western Health Board should clearly have been aware that intervention was required. From 1989 onwards, the family was known to be a dysfunctional family with difficulties.
The inquiry the Minister of State has sought to put in place is neither independent nor are its terms of reference adequate, being far too narrow to address the issue that must be addressed. There is a need to inquire into the manner in which the Western Health Board and personnel attached to it addressed issues relating to this family throughout the period they had come to the notice of the board until the end of 2004 when the children were taken into care. There is a need to address how the Health Service Executive dealt with the children as and from its formation on 1 January 2005 and why it did not at that stage, the children having been taken into care, conduct a review of events that occurred in the preceding years to identify what went wrong and to ensure no repetition.
There is a need to inquire into why it is that the Minister of State with responsibility for children, who is supposed to have an overview of what is happening in our child protection services, had no knowledge of any nature of the tragic circumstances of the children in Roscommon until media reports emerged on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning of last week relating to the criminal trial. There is a serious dysfunction within our child care system. It is essentially broken. There is an entire lack of reasonable communication between the Minister of State with responsibility for children, the Department of Health and Children and the Health Service Executive which administers the child protection services. It is astounding that the Minister of State learned of what occurred from media reports. It is equally astonishing that it took the advent of the criminal trial for the Health Service Executive to conduct its 48-hour initial review.
Moreover, it is singly inappropriate that the executive has appointed two members of its staff to the team that is conducting the investigation or review of what occurred. To call such an entity an independent investigation is a corruption of the English language. I have no doubt the two staff members concerned are admirable individuals. Mr. Gerry O'Neill is the national manager with specialist child care responsibilities, while Mr. Paul Harrison is its national child care specialist. Essentially, however, the executive is being asked to investigate itself. In no sense of the term can this be regarded as an independent investigation. If the investigation is to be properly conducted, there are people who will disagree with the approach of the Health Service Executive who should be interviewed by those conducting the inquiry. It is entirely inappropriate that the executive be involved at that level. Justice in this matter must not only be done but must be seen to be done.
The other two appointees to the investigating team are eminently suitable. Ms Norah Gibbons is the director of advocacy at Barnardos and Ms Leonie Lunny has worked in this areas in different capacities for years. If an independent inquiry under the 2004 Act had been announced, comprising these two individuals with perhaps another third independent individual, I would have welcomed it. The Minister should reconsider what is proposed. I hope Ms Gibbons and Ms Lunny will also rethink their position in the context of this inquiry. It is singly inappropriate for it to be structured in this way.
The Minister of State will respond that previous inquiries have included health board personnel. Three such inquiries were conducted during the 1990s, including the inquiry into the death of Kelly Fitzgerald which also resulted from the failure of the Western Health Board to do its job properly. In all these inquiries, health board personnel were part of the investigating group. However, there was a key difference in that those involved were from health boards other than the one being investigated. They were truly independent. It seems the Minister of State and the Health Service Executive lost sight of the reality that the health board structure was abolished. The executive is the single body governing the area of child care. We no longer have eight or 11 different health boards. However, it seems that when the Minister of State and the executive were considering how to put a group together, they concluded that it would be fine to include executive personnel because past investigations always included nominees from the health boards. They were nominated from outside health boards. The HSE is the health authority, therefore, it cannot investigate itself. It is particularly inappropriate that two of the people involved in the HSE in the child care area conduct this investigation because the HSE has utterly failed to properly apply, in a uniform manner across the country, the Children First child protection guidelines of 1999.
A damning independent report commissioned by the Minister's Department, published at the end of July 2008, made it clear that there are huge problems in this area. This was confirmed in a statement issued by the HSE announcing the formation of this inquiry group. In announcing its formation, Laverne McGuinness, described as HSE national director of primary, continuing and community care, made reference to the fact that the HSE hopes during the course of this year to start uniformly applying the child care guidelines across the country. In other words, despite the fact that the Kelly Fitzgerald report, published in 1996, recommended that the then child protection guidelines should be applied uniformly throughout the country — as should the 1999 guidelines — and despite the fact that it also recommended that the application of those guidelines should be monitored by the Office of the Department of Health and Children, namely by the Minister for Health and Children in her Department, neither of those two recommendations was implemented. In that context, it is completely inappropriate that the HSE be included in this group.
The terms of reference for this investigation are too narrow. They are primarily concerned with the conduct of the HSE. What is to be examined is the entire management of the case "from a care perspective". In other words, the HSE will examine how the Western Health Board, and presumably itself, together with Norah Gibbons and Leonie Lunney, dealt with the children in this tragic family. Those terms of reference do not allow for an investigation into the involvement of schools and school authorities. Nor do they allow for an assessment to be done of the extent to which the recommendations made in the Kelly Fitzgerald report, published in 1996, were either implemented by the Western Health Board, by the HSE or by the Government. They should so provide.
The terms of reference do not provide for an investigation and for questions to be answered by the alleged shadowy group composed of a number of individuals referred to in the criminal case who facilitated, insisted or encouraged the mother in this instance to seek some form of High Court order. They do not require that the circumstances surrounding the obtaining of that order be investigated and the nature of the legal advice on which the Western Health Board relied be assessed. A whole range of issues that this inquiry should investigate and examine are excluded. The terms of reference also do not expressly include examining the contact doctors and nurses had with these children; the extent to which they made reports that these children were at risk; if reports were made, how they were responded to and followed up; and the extent to which reports were ignored.
The inquiry can deal with what the Western Health Board did but there is no basis within it for doctors and nurses to talk to those conducting the inquiry. There is no basis under which health board personnel, who formerly worked for the Western Health Board and are no longer employees of the HSE, can be required to co-operate with this inquiry. Those conducting it have no powers to serve subpoenas or to take evidence in a manner envisaged in the 2004 Act. As a consequence, this inquiry will not do the job that is required in the interests of protecting children, nor in the public interest. It is essential that this job is done properly and correctly.
In context of the inquiry being conducted, it is essential that it happens and that the issues are addressed, but I am heartily sick of the failures in our child care services which place children at risk, which result in children suffering and enduring harm for long periods during which it should never have occurred and for the fact that we produce reports that make substantive recommendations that are never implemented and nothing ever changes. I have before me the Kelly Fitzgerald report, a huge report that the Western Health Board, on its publication, pledged to implement. It was received by the Western Health Board in 1995 and it attempted to suppress its publication. I was a member of an Oireachtas joint committee that compelled its publication and ensured that in April 1996 it became public knowledge. This report contains a plethora of recommendations, some of which were the responsibility of the health board to implement and some of which were the responsibility of Government to do so. Most of those that fell within the responsibility of Government were never implemented. Clearly, from what occurred in this tragic family, many that were supposed to apply to the Western Health Board were not implemented.
There is no purpose in our having investigations and reports which contain recommendations if they are going to be ignored. There is no value in this investigation unless there is a look-back as to why the Western Health Board did not do what it should have done and why at the same time as this report became public knowledge the Western Health Board was dealing with children in this family and failing them. I do not want to hear anyone tell me that the reason the Western Health Board did not act sooner and take these children into care is because of constitutional difficulties. I have been advocating a constitutional referendum to protect the rights of children and explicitly recognise them for many years. I hope, ultimately, that we will have that referendum.
Last summer the Minister poured cold water on the need for a referendum and widely briefed that perhaps we should not have one. Irrespective of whether we do or do not need one, the absence of the type of changes we need in our Constitution is not the cause of the problems of these children in Roscommon. Section 18 of the Child Care Act 1991 gave the health board more than adequate powers to intervene and take these children into care. The child protection guidelines of 1999 set the parameters of what should have happened. Neither was properly applied. Those failures are not only a failure by the health board but of Government to ensure that matters are properly dealt with and monitored.
I want to cite one sentence from a key recommendation in the Kelly Fitzgerald report, published in 1996. It states that we recommend that the Department of Health adopt a proactive approach in monitoring health boards' child care developments in order to ensure consistency on a national scale, both in provision and in respect of procedures and practice. To this day, that has not been implemented. If it had been, these children caught in these tragic circumstances might have been spared some of the dreadful abuse that they suffered.
It is in the public interest that we get full answers to all these questions. The worst of all worlds would be that this inquiry commences, determines that its terms of reference are inadequate, a report is produced that deals with a portion of the issues and a further inquiry proves necessary. That should not happen.
A series of events with regard to children and to the brief exercised by the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, sadly illustrate that he is seriously out of his depth. The Government only responds to issues relating to children when matters that have gone seriously wrong are exposed in the media. It seems there is no mechanism in place between the Minister's Department and the HSE whereby alarm bells ring at a point in time where something has gone wrong to ensure corrective action is taken and reviews are conducted.
I believe there are many other instances of children at risk where there has been a failure to properly intervene. We know that there are hundreds of instances of children reported to be at risk of abuse whose files are sitting on shelves in the offices of the HSE without social workers allocated to conduct the necessary assessments and without the necessary intervention taking place.
I have some sympathy for social workers. Many social workers in the child care system are working in circumstances that are intolerable. They have too high a case load, do not get adequate training and do not always get the legal back up they require. The report published at the end of July was a damning indictment of the failure of the HSE to ensure that social workers in the child care area get the necessary in-service training.
I am sorry to say the Minister of State's history, and that of his predecessors in the Department of Health and Children — I campaigned to have the Department of Children set up — do not give rise to any great sense of optimism that the Department is contributing in this area in the way it should. It has become too interested in public relations. One of the central roles of the Minister of State with responsibility for children and young people should be to ensure that where children are at risk child protection services work properly, that where information is required in order to make policy the information is on hand, and that there is real time information about the workings of our child care system. None of these currently exists.
The failings of the HSE and the incapacity of the Minister of State to ensure we have an efficient service are clearly illustrated by the fact we are now in January 2009 and, despite its statutory obligations, the HSE has not yet published its report on the child care services for 2007. It sneaked its 2006 report onto its website in October 2008. If the Minister of State is to make policy in 2009, he will be relying on information from a report relating to 2006. That is totally inappropriate.
There is further significant hypocrisy concerning lack of communication and other issues the Minister of State has engaged in with the bishops. In the past few days there has been much publicity about the Minister of State meeting with the bishops and seeking to ensure the audit made on different dioceses will have information added that had been missing. This concerns part 5 of the questionnaire that was issued by the HSE. That section was one of the most vital parts of the audit as it sought to ascertain how many allegations of child sexual abuse had been made against members of the clergy, and the extent to which such allegations had been reported properly to the civil authorities by the church authorities in individual dioceses. It was essentially a statistical question. When the audit was finally published we discovered that the bishops had failed to answer that question. It became an issue about the credibility and value of the audit. All of a sudden the Minister became proactive to solve the problem. It was as if he had only discovered there was a difficulty when the audit landed on his desk.
When the documentation was published relating to that audit we discovered that in May 2007 the HSE had written to the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, who was then Minister of State with responsibility for children and young people, pointing out that bishops across the country were not responding to that section of the audit and were saying they had legal difficulties. Instead of an intervention by the then Minister of State or, subsequently, by Deputy Brendan Smith in the same position, nothing happened at Government level. Nobody actually cared. It did not matter. Only when publicity resulted exposing the lack of value of the audit and the difficulties that had arisen, did the Minister of State engage in some form of discussion, 18 months after being notified by the HSE of the difficulties it was experiencing in the conduct of the audit. That matter is not something for which the HSE can be criticised.
I will finish by referring to one final issue.
The Deputy has a minute and a half.
In the context of the motion we are discussing I noticed that the Minister of State has tabled an amendment in predictable self-congratulatory terms. One of the things he wishes us to do is to acknowledge the steps being taken by him in "co-ordinating and leading policy development and actions to bring about improvements in the delivery of services for children". I would be interested to hear the Minister of State explain why, 12 years after child protection guidelines were put in place, they are still not uniformly applied across the country. I do not know what lead role his Department is playing.
The Minister of State concludes by commending the work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children. I am a member of that committee, in company with Deputy Mary O'Rourke. The Minister of State commends, in particular, the recommendation included in the committee's interim report of 11 September 2008 regarding publication of legislation in respect of "the collection and exchange of information concerning the risk or the occurrence of endangerment, sexual exploitation or sexual abuse of children".
In other words, the Minister welcomes and commends the committee for the publication of its report on soft information. What he failed to tell the House is that, across party lines and unanimously, the report recommended and asked Government to publish that legislation before Christmas 2008. That legislation does not even appear in the Government's programme of Bills to be published before Easter. It is in the category of "heads of Bills to be prepared". In commending the committee on another vital issue relating to child sexual abuse, the Minister and the Government have proved themselves incapable of delivering the legislation with the urgency required. They are also incapable of complying with the request made by the all-party committee which includes members of the Minister's party.
I hope that between now and tomorrow evening the Government will reconsider the need to have a truly independent investigation, with broader terms of reference. I hope the two truly independent individuals who were appointed to this committee will give further consideration to the inappropriateness of the committee's composition and that they will consider the need to change substantially its terms of reference. This is required in order to ensure that the broad range of issues be investigated, in full and properly, and that it be reported upon, as demanded by the public interest and the interests of children.
I thank Deputy Shatter for placing this very important motion before the House.
What has become known as the Roscommon incest case is a tragedy for all concerned. It is a case that generates anger, revulsion and pity in equal measure. More than any other emotion, sympathy should be to the forefront of our reactions: sympathy for the children let down by the system and also sympathy for the mother who was left adrift to cope with the difficulties and addictions that drove her to commit unmentionable crimes against her own children and the innocence of childhood.
It is debatable whether a custodial sentence for the mother of these unfortunate children is the correct response. This sentence may make us all feel better. Justice has been seen to have been done. Or has it? What is justice in this case? We have a situation where a mother, the perceived protector of her family, apparently abused the trust placed in her to protect her children from all harm and to provide them with a loving and caring home. However, rather than pointing the finger at this poor unfortunate woman who was crying out for help that was not there surely the Government and the HSE deserve to stand in the dock, accused by all of gross neglect of these children and their mother.
No woman who has received the necessary help to overcome addiction and abnormal behaviour will deliberately set out to harm her children. On the other hand, this poor unfortunate is a different matter. She is the victim of adverse circumstances who had nowhere to turn for help. This woman has offended public morality but how much she is responsible is open to debate What about her rights to the full benefit of social services? These were conspicuously absent in this case, both for the mother and for the unfortunate children. Perhaps we should say that this woman is more to be pitied than condemned and we should look to our collective consciences to see how the system let her down and how we can ensure that such a tragedy will never occur again.
The chain of errors that led to these children being left in an appalling position cannot be brushed under the carpet. It is not enough for the Minister of State with responsibility for children and young people to say after the event that the health service staff should have taken these children into care "an awful lot sooner". What he, the relevant Minister of State, should be asking, loudly, is why they were not taken into care. Could the Minister meet those six children, look them in the eye and say she, as the person charged with their welfare, did her best for them? I think not. As with the extensive litany of failures she has presided over, platitudes after the event only serve to highlight the inadequacies of the Minister's tenure and the buck passing which goes on between herself and the HSE.
This situation is a major indictment of the refusal of the Government to draw up plans for a referendum on children's rights. What does it take to force the Government to acknowledge its duty to our children and to copper-fasten their right to safety? Lip service is periodically paid to such a need and becomes more vocal as need arises, only to fade away again until the next outrage is publicised. No Government can claim to have the well-being of its children at heart that refuses to put every possible constitutional, legislative and administrative protection in place to ensure their safety. It appears that in the Ireland of the 21st century, the child is invisible and his or her voice is never heard.
This country is on its knees, with its head hanging low in terms of the horrors unleashed on its children. While clerical abuse has been the main focus of our outrage and horror, surely the abuse of innocent children in their own home by the main nurturing figure, under the eyes of the authorities, is beyond comprehension. Where was the concern of the people involved in the day-to-day lives of the children, who had nobody to give them support? Did their immediate family, their neighbours, their friends' parents and their teachers not feel that action needed to be taken? Surely their concerns should have radiated out to the wider circle of the HSE, care workers, gardaí and others.
Have we become so isolated in our own worlds, cocooned in the pursuit of our own advancement, that we can no longer see what is right in front of us, and the suffering that is obviously being experienced by some in our midst? The breakdown of communities and a sense of community is facilitating abuse to be carried out before our eyes but we do not or choose not to notice. The sooner we acknowledge that intervention and meddling are two separate actions, and allow that concern, not malicious intent, drives most calls for action, the better for our children.
While the Minister and the HSE must shoulder the ultimate blame for this horror, legal obstacles faced by health service personnel are a major contributory factor. The Constitution rightly favours parents over third parties but we must acknowledge and act on the fact families can be extremely dangerous places for children to grow up in. It is unbelievable that 16 years have passed since Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, as she then was, recommended a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of children in the family. Mrs. Justice McGuinness's recommendations arose from her legitimate contention that the high emphasis on the rights of the family in the Constitution may consciously, or unconsciously, be interpreted as giving a higher value to the rights of parents than to the rights of the children. These recommendations arose from the Kilkenny incest case but it will take the Roscommon incest case to finally see them acted upon.
I congratulate Deputy Shatter on bringing forward the motion. It is a scandal it had to be brought forward but not unexpected when one knows the way our systems work. It is shocking and disturbing to see what these six children have come through, and it is clear they suffered much abuse and many difficulties. Although they were attending school and were out in public, nobody cried stop. It is a scandalous situation about which one must ask many questions.
The biggest question is why the Minister, when she was putting forward an inquiry into this situation, chose two people from the HSE to inquire into the HSE itself. I support Deputy Shatter very strongly on this issue. As one who has experience of many inquiries in the north east, I know it is very important that one has people who cannot be questioned. I do not doubt the ability of those two people from the HSE as I do not know either of them. However, the bottom line is that they are staff members of the HSE and, as such, they have certain loyalties. I would not be happy that they would inquire into a situation such as this.
One must ask where were all of those who were in contact with these children on a daily or weekly basis, namely, the church, teachers, neighbours and, above all, the services. As one who has been much involved with the services for other reasons, I unfortunately know better than most how they work. They have such an administrative structure that it is hard for those at the coalface to get support or, as Deputy Shatter said, to get the training they need for such situations. It is vital, and has been often said, that this should be the last straw. We must get our structures right and the HSE must learn from this. It is important the different organisations that could have had contact with these children, whether they are educational organisations or otherwise, would not allow such a situation to happen again.
I could point to the legal situation. In a statement sometime ago, Deputy Shatter noted that in November 2006 the report of the Joint Committee on Child Protection was published and contained 62 different recommendations with regard to sexual offences against children. Among those recommendations is one that the criminal law in this area be substantially reformed and codified into a single statute. While this issue has been around for many years, we find that the court decision to impose sentences was made based on an Act of 1908.
The Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, and the senior Minister, Deputy Harney, must work to have this Act updated. They have an extremely important opportunity available to them, whereby they are entitled to give leadership. They are the two people in the most exalted situation as far as these children are concerned. The Minister and the Minister of State have the power not just to sit on legislation but to get it made. As was seen this afternoon, if legislation is needed, my party will support it wholeheartedly. I appeal to the Minister for Health and Children and the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children to re-examine what is being done and to re-examine the management structures in place, which are so top heavy that ordinary staff believe they are left in a very vulnerable situation. The people who will get the blame are possibly those at level of social workers and I have a good deal of sympathy for them, as I have dealt with them in other cases. Their hands are tied and they are subject to all types of regulation. I appeal to the Minister and Minister of State to get to grips with the administrative structure which has been allowed to continue. Recently, I drove into a car park in St. Davnet's complex, County Monaghan, and I could not believe the number of cars I saw there and, by extension, the number of administrators working. This is at a time when I cannot arrange for home help or any other service for which there is no money available.
I call on the Deputy to conclude.
This is not the way the country should be run. It should be run in a hands-on fashion where those who have the right to hold responsibility, take that responsibility. I hold the Minister and Minister of State responsible for what has occurred. It was the lack of leadership and structures in place which led to this situation and it must never occur again.