THE INDEPENDENCE of the Health Service Executive (HSE) investigation into the Roscommon abuse case has been queried by members of the HSE West’s regional forum.
Elected councillors for Roscommon and Galway city and county expressed serious concern about the make-up of the investigation team during yesterday’s HSE West forum in Galway.
Independent Roscommon councillor Tony Ward also pressed the HSE to explain why a district court case was not pursued by the former Western Health Board when efforts to take the six children at the centre of the case into care were thwarted by a High Court order in 2000.
Mr Ward said he wished to know “why the health board didn’t think it worth their while to present themselves at a local district court with the information they had”, when the restraining order prevented staff from placing the six children in care over eight years ago. The six children were “left in a house where they were abused” and suffered terrible conditions, he said, and “the Western Health Board couldn’t turn up and make a case to a judge”.
Mr Ward said he wished to know “how many more such cases” were occurring in the west, and queried the independence of an investigation team that included two members of the HSE.
Roscommon councillor Charlie Hopkins (FG) said he had similar issues, although he was not criticising as such the particular personnel on the inquiry team. He was also concerned about the team’s powers to “make people co-operate” with the investigation.
While he would not like to see “too much debate” at the forum about a “very sensitive issue”, elected representatives for Roscommon had concerns and were critical of the failure to hold a referendum on children’s rights, Mr Hopkins said.
Cllr Padraig Conneely (FG) described the inquiry as a “charade, a cover-up and a smokescreen”.
“Someone said that the bank regulator was asleep during the recent banking debacle, but the HSE was asleep and I am concerned that there may be more cases like this,” Mr Conneely said.
HSE West assistant director of services Seamus McNulty said he wished to remind members that there were further legal proceedings pending in relation to the case, which was “extremely complex”. The investigation’s report would be published, “taking into account natural justice and the sensitivity of the case”, he said.