The fact that a 16-year-old victim of rape and torture was, until last night, homeless despite daily contact with a health board represents a shocking "system failure" for the childcare services, to borrow the phrase used by the Minister of State for Children yesterday.
Specifically, it suggests that the gulf between frontline childcare workers and health board decision-makers has become so great that the system has almost come to a halt.
The evidence for this does not depend on this case alone. About six weeks ago IMPACT, which represents social workers in the Eastern Regional Health Authority Area, revealed that 1,158 children in Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow were waiting to have their cases investigated by a social worker.
The really upsetting thing is that figures like this have been around for years.
All these children, it is safe to say, came to the attention of social workers because a relative, neighbour, teacher, doctor, nurse or other person was worried that there was something wrong.
It might be that if their cases were ever investigated it would turn out that there was no cause of concern for most of them.
But it has to be asked whether among those cases there are small children who must feed and clothe themselves as best they can because their parents cannot or will not do so.
Are there children who go to school late, half-asleep, and so hungry they can take in nothing that is going on around them? Are there children who are routinely told they are dirt, that they will be killed, that they should not be on this Earth in the first place? Are there children who are beaten, thrown against walls, kicked, slapped, punched by out-of-control adults? Are there children who are sexually assaulted for the gratification of adults?
We know that all these things happen to children. The figures from IMPACT give us plenty of reason to believe that our system is so lax, so incapable of getting to grips with reality on the ground, that it virtually licenses the neglect of children.
This is not to say that nothing is happening. A great deal is happening. Over the past few years, much energy has gone into transforming the Eastern Health Board into a more elaborate organisation.
What it has been replaced by is a strategic authority - the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) - and three "area" health boards.
The amount of planning and management time which this transformation took up can easily be imagined. Yet, a month before the ERHA came into being this year, there were frontline childcare workers who did not know where the headquarters of their new boards were located, or how the change would affect them.
What relevance has this to children on the streets? It underlines the immensity of the gap between the top echelons of the social services and the frontline workers who must try to cope with the needs of troubled and hurt children.
Between that frontline worker and the decision-maker there will be a team leader, senior social worker, head social worker and area manager, and that's before the line of command even gets into a central office.
In other words, the ability of a frontline worker to influence the people who control money, staffing and other resources is so limited as to be virtually non-existent.
These are all good people but they are caught in a trap. The layers of bureaucracy and management which characterise health board management must be pared down to a level which puts control of resources in the hands of the frontline workers and their immediate local managers. In that way, the people who meet the children every day will have some opportunity to arrange suitable services for them.
When the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, meets the ERHA and officials of the Northern Area Health Board (NAHB) today, he would do well to question the whole way the childcare system is organised and not confine his inquiry to the issue of what happened in this case.
He has made it clear that in relation to hospital and other health services he believes much more could be done.
How is the process of reform to begin? A first step would be an inquiry by an Oireachtas committee such as the Joint Committee on Family, Community and Social Affairs.
The alternative is to allow the system to drift, as homeless children are too often allowed to do, with devastating consequences.