Dail Statements on Child Protection
29 April 2010
Deputy Alan Shatter: I listened with interest to the Minister of State’s speech. I do not believe that within the limited time available to me I will have an opportunity to address each of the topics raised by him but will try to cover a number of them which are of considerable importance.
The first issue I wish to address is the holding of a children’s rights referendum. It is now nine or ten weeks since the committee chaired by Deputy O’Rourke, of which I was privileged to be a member, published its report. I find it extraordinary that not a single Cabinet Minister has yet gone on record either agreeing with the new proposed constitutional amendment nor has the Government confirmed a date for the holding of a referendum.
In the context of all of the scandals and disasters surrounding our child care services, it is not good enough to speak about prioritising children and children’s rights and needs. We are drowning in a plethora of reports and good intentions. What we need is Government commitment. I call on the Government to state exactly where it stands. Is there a date for the holding of this referendum which should be held in 2010. Is the wording, worked through over two years on a cross-party basis in a committee attended by the Minister of State, his predecessor and the present Minister and previous Ministers for Justice, accepted? If a referendum is to be held the work undertaken in good faith by members of that committee needs to be explained to the public. The reason for change needs to be understood. The benefits of change, both in the public interest and in the interests of children, need to be clearly understood by those who will vote in a referendum.
Essentially what has happened is that the report has been published and so far buried by Government, with no commitment given. I am very disappointed that the Minister of State yet again, on the holding of the referendum and on the wording of an amendment, kicked to touch and simply genuflected in its direction and told us there is some sort of internal Government Committee considering it. . I do not believe this is good enough or that this matter is receiving the priority required to ensure we finally extend to children the constitutional protection to which they are entitled and to remove some of the discriminations inherent in our current law with regard to children as a consequence of provisions in our Constitution.
I listened to what the Minister of State had to say about our child care and protection services. I am conscious that he has been in his current position – he may correct me on this if I am wrong – for approximately two years and that he inherited the mess left by his predecessors and the failure of Fianna Fáil in Government over a decade to truly prioritise the needs of children and to ensure we had a proper functioning child care and protection service. When the Minister of State referred to the HSE and legacy issues, “legacy” is a nice neat technical word for describing neglect and utter failure over a decade to put in place systems, procedures and structures that ensured the Children First Child Protection Guidelines of 1999 were properly applied.
It is interesting to note a quote, included in the report by Geoffrey Shannon which the Government has accepted, by former Minister of State with special responsibility for children, Deputy Frank Fahey, on the occasion of the publication by the Department of Health and Children of the Child Protection Guidelines 1999 which states that “the guidelines were to be applied consistently by health boards, Government Departments and by organisations which provide services to children” and that they were “to support and guide health professionals, teachers, members of the Garda Síochána and the many people in sporting, cultural, community and voluntary organisations who come into regular contact with children and are therefore in a position of responsibility in recognising and responding to possible child abuse.” That was at a time when it was the health boards who were to administer our child care and protection services.
We then enacted the Health Act 2004 which put in place the HSE. During the Second Stage debate on that Bill on 23 November 2004, the then and current Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, stated:
“This is a once in a generation event. It is our chance to put in place modern effective management to make the best use of these tremendous resources we are applying to health and to get clear value and clear results for that money. To achieve this, we badly need clarity of roles and accountability, political responsibility for the Minister and management responsibility for the management.”
Where are we today? We have a dysfunctional, chaotic child care and protection service, grossly mismanaged with a plethora of reports, one commissioned by the Minister of State’s office acknowledging that at no stage have the Children First, Child Care and Protection Guidelines been uniformly or even properly applied across the country.
The Minister of State has acknowledged that in December 2009 he published a revised form of the child protection guidelines, which appeared quietly on a website. I find it extraordinary, in the context of the recognition that there was a need to revise the guidelines because of the failure of the HSE to properly apply them and the need to bring them up to date because of developments that occurred even in the context of the creation of other agencies in the intervening period, that the Minister would come into this House on the last week in April, more than four months since they were put on his website, and inform us that they would be published and that finally something would be done to ensure the professionals working on the frontline with children are aware of the detail of the new child protection guidelines. How is that prioritising children and ensuring they are given the protection to which they are entitled?
But what I find particularly questionable is the ongoing, obsessive secrecy with regard to our child care and protection services. Yes, when a family, individual child or children are in trouble or difficulty and require supports, yes of course their names should be kept confidential . Yes, of course, they should have available assistance and services in a manner that does not produce widespread newspaper reports. But we must have a service that is accountable and we must have a service that is transparent. The Minister of State, I think, acknowledges that the reports published into the tragic deaths of Tracy Fay and David Foley are grossly inadequate in the context of accountability and other issues. But the Minister of State was powerless to ensure appropriate reports were published. I do not know what parallel universe they occupy, whether it is it his fault or simply the fault of the HSE, when they could publish a report into the death of Tracey Fay which operates in a universe as if that full report had never been laid before this House.
But what is even more deplorable, is when it comes to dealing with reports, at least the true story of what happened in the tragic life of Tracy Fay has been told but the true story of what happened to David Foley has been covered up. That is not about protecting his dignity or protecting confidentiality of family members. There is an over-riding obsession within the HSE to protect the reputation of those who have not properly delivered the service expected of them in accordance with their statutory duties and employment responsibilities. The failure to publish is more about protecting those who have failed to do their jobs properly within the HSE, especially at management level, and who too frequently and tragically ignored recommendations made by hard-pressed, frontline social workers, who feared for the future of these two young people and who have feared for the future of other young people.
I put it to the Minster of State that we must bring accountability and transparency to the process. I am disappointed that in his speech today, the Minister of State omitted any reference of any description to a very important report. It is especially important in the context of the monitoring committee the Minister of State now says has been established. I do not know whether the Minister of State has had sight of this report, whether it is yet another piece of information the HSE has failed to furnish to him or whether this report has been deliberately covered up because it is yet another devastating indictment of the child care and protection services, its structure and management and because it contains substantial recommendations for reform, which the HSE doesn’t want to make public for fear its capacity to implement such recommendations would be monitored and they would be held accountable. Or maybe it is and I am willing to give the Minister of State the benefit of the doubt in this regard, maybe he knows nothing of this report and he should be informed of it. However, if he is aware of this report the issue of accountability attaches to the Minister of State as well.
The report to which I refer was commissioned by the HSE, prepared by the PA Consulting group and furnished to the HSE in October 2009. The report which I am laying before the House today, because I believe it should be in the public domain, is entitled Inspiring Confidence in Children and Family Services: Putting Children First and Meaning It. That will be a change. This report, commissioned by the HSE and furnished to it last October has not been widely circulated. It has never been published and we do not know what has been done on foot of it to implement the recommendations contained in it. We do not know if anyone is monitoring it. We do not know what part of it’s recommendations have been accepted or rejected. We do not even know whether the Minister of State has seen this report.
I call on the Minister of State to inform the House in his reply today whether he has seen it. If he has seen it, why was it not referred to today in his statement to the House? I also wish to know why Geoffrey Shannon, a person of integrity and decency who has been re-appointed by the Government the child protection rapporteur, was not furnished with this report before he completed his report for 2009, the recommendations of which the Minister of State maintains the Government accepted. Geoffrey Shannon’s report was only laid before the House and made publically available last week on 21 April.
One of the recommendations, on page 68, in Geoffrey Shannon’s report calls for an independent, national review of the current child protection system to be carried out. It recommends that review should involve examination of child protection data, international practice and consultations with stakeholders to identify the primary child protection concerns and areas in need of reform. This was published in April 2010 by the Minister of State. Interestingly, when the Minister of State informed us in his statement today that recommendations made by Geoffrey Shannon had been accepted, he did not state that particular recommendation had been accepted. What’s interesting about that recommendation, presumably made at the end of 2009 and published in April 2010, is it seems that recommendation had already been implemented by the HSE before it was made. Because that’s the job that was done by PA Consulting for the HSE, I don’t know at what cost to the State.
What is also interesting about that report is that some of the criticisms it makes of the child care and protection service simply replicate what was contained in the review published by the Minister of State’s Department, which was paid for by taxpayers at the end of July in 2008. However, this report dates from October 2009. This report concludes that the structure and model of child care service is grossly inadequate and essentially incapable of providing proper protection for children.
The report emphasises something I have maintained for some time, something I believe is a disgrace and a scandal, which is that our child care and protection services are not child-centred. Essentially, the primary concern is the delivery system and structure as created by the HSE. I refer to the report, which states, “the needs of children are secondary to the needs of the delivery system”.
Why was no reference made to this report? There is a need to let in the light if we are to have a truly functioning, accountable child care and protection service that can be monitored and where we can determine where improvements have been made, whether defects are being addressed. Such reports as this should be in the public domain and it is extraordinary that this report is not in the public domain.
It’s an attitude not just within the HSE but within Government as well. On Tuesday this week, I tabled a question to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform calling on him to publish the protocol that exists between the HSE and the Garda Síochána to deal with missing children. The response was to refuse to publish it or furnish it to me on the basis that it was an operational matter between the Garda Síochána and the HSE. Just a protocol, which isn’t even widely known among social workers as to what to do when a child in care goes missing. If you look on the websites of the children’s authorities throughout England there are protocols such as this up on websites as between the police in England and the local authorities responsible for child welfare. It is extraordinary that the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Minister took the view this was something that should not be published. I believe the protocol should be available as well. That protocol has been received by me, although not through the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The report to which I have referred and the protocol are both now publicly available on Fine Gael’s Let in the Light website, www.letinthelight.ie. I want to say to the Minister of State that we will continue to campaign and do everything possible to ensure we have an accountable and properly transparent child care and protection service, within which the huge gaps and deficiencies are being properly and adequately addressed.
The exercise that went on last Friday, when at 3.00 p.m. or at 3.30 on a Friday evening the HSE put out to the media truncated reports purporting to present the tragedies that occurred in the lives of Tracy Fay and David Foley are a classic example of everything that is wrong with our child care and protection services.
In the truncated reports they detailed the recommendations that were made and a pretence was made by way of the HSE’s response to these recommendations and in the statement that they put on their website that everything is fine now, all these issues have been addressed. The HSE equally failed in their responses to make any reference to the huge deficiencies that were detailed last October in this document. We do not know of any timeline for remedying those deficiencies. I know that since this document was published, Mr. Phil Garland has been appointed as national director of children’s services. I am not naive enough to believe that as a result of his appointment, everything is rosy in the garden, as now presented by the HSE to the media late on a Friday evening when they hoped the reports they published would receive little notice and little publicity.
I am aware that for a long time, no one was able to identify who was in charge of the child care and protection services. We need a statutory change. The Minister of State or his successor should be put in charge. When I heard that Mr. Garland had been appointed, I welcomed it because I know of his reputation. However, having observed the manner in which these issues were dealt with last Friday, heard the public comments he made after Fine Gael published the report into the tragic death of Tracey Fay and in the context of his silence about this report, I fear that his good intentions are being overwhelmed by the appalling ethos that applies within the HSE, which is keep your head down, say nothing, keep everything confidential, don’t let in the light and ensure nobody is ever held accountable for anything that goes wrong. The priority is to preserve the system, not to protect children and that is a priority I want to see changed.
