A SENIOR OFFICIAL with the Health Service Executive (HSE) has said the case in which a mother-of-six was jailed last week for subjecting her children to incest, neglect and ill-treatment was “extremely complex”.
Laverne McGuinness, the HSE’s national director of primary, continuing and community care, said the HSE understood the anxieties and concerns that have been expressed in relation to the “sad and distressing” case.
She was speaking on Saturday after the HSE announced what it termed an independent investigation into the management of the case from a care perspective.
“There is no doubt that these children have been let down badly by society. We – and all agencies – have to openly and honestly look at, with our current knowledge, what we did, examine the part we played and learn from that. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure, in as much as is possible, that no other child has to face such an unspeakable tragedy ever again,” Ms McGuinness said in a statement.
Fine Gael and Labour questioned the independence of the investigation, given that two of the four people on the inquiry team are from the HSE.
Alan Shatter, Fine Gael’s spokesman on children, said while it will have an independent chairwoman in Barnardos’ director of advocacy Norah Gibbons, the make-up of the inquiry team made a mockery of the term independent.He said its terms of reference were also “too narrow, grossly inadequate and tantamount to a cover-up”.
Fine Gael will table a motion in the Dáil tomorrow calling for an independent commission of inquiry.
In a statement last night the HSE said it was fully satisfied as to the integrity and independence of the investigation team. Their combined backgrounds “provided a significant legal and social work/childcare dimension”.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan said if the inquiry were to be truly independent it should not have people from the HSE on it.
Ms McGuinness told RTÉ’s This Week yesterday the inquiry would establish the things the health services did well, in addition to “what did we not do, how were we wrong, and where are the things that we should have done better”.
She refused to comment on the findings of a preliminary HSE investigation. “I can confidently say that there are questions there that we certainly need to look at very deeply as part of an investigation and I am determined that the HSE will leave no stone unturned until we can answer all those questions, no matter how painful those questions are.”
Sentencing the woman to seven years in jail at Roscommon Circuit Court, Judge Miriam Reynolds said the children “were failed by everyone around them”.
She said she was concerned the former Western Health Board had been involved with the family since 1996, but the children had not been taken into care until 2004. She pointed out that the children had gone to school with head lice crawling down their faces.
Ms McGuinness, who admitted yesterday some social workers have “very heavy case loads” handling up to 80 cases at a time, confirmed the health board had been supporting the family since 1989.
The inquiry has six months to complete its work. Apart from Ms Gibbons, its other members are Leonie Lunney, former CEO of Comhairle; Paul Harrison, national childcare specialist with the HSE and Gerry O’Neill, a HSE national manager with specialist childcare responsibility. Their report will be made public.
Minister for Children Barry Andrews said he was “confident” the terms of reference were “sufficiently broad” to ensure all relevant facts were established and “appropriate findings” made.