Madam, – In his analysis “Monumental failure to protect children in care” (Opinion, June 8th), Carl O’Brien writes: “If the Health Service Executive (HSE) was a parent, many of its children would be taken away and placed in care.” That is the only conclusion, says Mr O’Brien, based on the monumental failure of the HSE to protect children in its care.
May I also conclude that if the HSE was the Irish Catholic Church, many of its leaders would have had to step down in disgrace and there would be calls for the archbishop (Minister for Children) and his predecessors to also step down.
This State failed to protect children in the past and passed on that responsibility to religious orders, some of whom failed badly in that duty of care placed upon them as documented by the Ryan report. The most vulnerable children in society are still being failed by the State long after the religious have left the arena of institutional child care. Yet we are supposed to be content with the HSE declaring that it is undertaking a wide-ranging review. This has no credibility.
It is time for the establishment of a separate department for children and an end to the hypocrisy where the church is rightly held to a high standard but our State institutions, which don’t even have proper records, are allowed to wriggle and worm their way out of taking radical responsibility for the catastrophe they have presided over in their failure to protect the most vulnerable children in our society. – Yours, etc,