A MEMBER of the extended family of the woman at the centre of the Roscommon incest case has spoken out against any Health Service Executive involvement in an inquiry which was set up at the weekend to look at how her six children were served by childcare services.
The inquiry announced by the HSE is to be carried out by four people, two of whom are independent of the HSE and two of whom are HSE representatives.
Calls by Fine Gael and Labour for the entire inquiry team to be independent of the HSE were backed yesterday by a relative of the children.
The relative, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said the cover-up had gone on for long enough. “We know too much of what has gone on. As far as we are concerned the child does not have adequate protection in this State and is not protected under the Constitution. It is ridiculous what has gone on,” the relative said.
The HSE reiterated yesterday that it is fully satisfied as to the integrity and independence of the investigation team.
And speaking to reporters in Dublin yesterday Minister for Health Mary Harney said she believed the team assembled by the HSE should be able to establish the facts of what happened in a timely fashion.
Responding to claims from Fine Gael that a full commission of inquiry with powers to compel witnesses should have been established, she said: “I think sometimes we are very quick to jump to the conclusion that you need a full-blown tribunal of inquiry in order to get the facts. Now we know from our experience in Ireland over the last decade, where we have many such inquiries, that they do not deliver information in a speedy fashion and I believe the form of inquiry that’s now being put in place will get us the information we require quickly.”
She said there were many questions that have to be answered by the inquiry team which is chaired by Barnardo’s director of advocacy Norah Gibbons. She added that Barnardo’s had a terrific track record in this whole area.
“I believe the mechanism that has been put in place to be chaired by a very respected person from Barnardo’s is the appropriate mechanism to get the facts as quickly as possible,” she said.
“But my own hunch at the outset, not knowing the facts yet, is that if we acted more thoroughly and more robustly and more speedily, these children should have been taken into care an awful lot sooner,” she added.
Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews has already said he is confident the investigation set up by the HSE will provide “a comprehensive and transparent account” of the way in which health services interacted with the family.
The 40-year-old Roscommon mother was jailed for seven years last week for subjecting her children to incest, neglect and ill-treatment.
Sentencing the woman Judge Miriam Reynolds said her six children “were failed by everyone around them”. She said she was concerned at the fact that the former Western Health Board had been involved since 1996 with the family but the children had not been taken into care until 2004. The judge pointed out that during that time the children had gone to school with head lice “crawling down their faces”.
The court heard a plan by the health board to place them with an aunt in 2000 was scuppered when their mother took a High Court injunction. They were only taken into care in 2004 after it emerged the mother had forced her then 13-year-old son to have sex with her.
Alan Shatter, Fine Gael’s spokesman on children, claimed the inquiry should be fully independent of the HSE and its terms of reference should be broader to look at what action, if any, school authorities, other health professionals or individuals in a position to report the plight of the children took. Fine Gael will table a motion, seeking an independent commission of inquiry in the Dáil today.