Time was when everything seemed to be much simpler. The problem of troubled children gave every appearance of being resolved when such children were removed to the confines of an industrial school. The problems of insane people were met by warehousing them in vast mental asylums. Even the problems of poverty could apparently be met by putting the paupers, when ill or disabled by age, into the workhouse. But these, and more "solutions" like them, merely compounded the individual problems, as we know now with the benefit of hindsight and recent horrendous revelations of abuse in institutional care. A policy based on the principle of "out of sight, out of mind" is inhumane, notwithstanding the presence in many institutions of staff who cared deeply for the people in their charge.
But the latest manifestation of uncaring inhumanity evident in Irish society leaves young children and whole families on the streets who are desperately in need of love and protective support to heal them of the wounds inflicted by intolerable abuse in their homes. As court cases have shown us for decades past, they are certainly not out of sight. But they would appear to be out of the minds of those who, acting on behalf of the State, are statutorily obliged to provide them with the care that they so desperately need.
For years, Judge Hubert Wine seemed to run a one-man campaign from Dun Laoghaire District Court on the absence of care and shelter for troubled children. More recently, Mr Justice Kelly in the High Court has been regularly denouncing the State and its supposedly caring authorities for their persistent failure to provide services for young people who need protection. There are even instances in which children have been ejected from what should have been places of care and protection because of their behaviour in those places. It was precisely their behaviour which led to their being sent to these places in the first instance. What kind of madness is this?
The latest case to draw public attention came before the courts last week and resulted in an abusing father and husband being sentenced to more than 100 years in jail for almost incredible physical and sexual abuse of his wife and daughter. It was revealed in this newspaper yesterday that the daughter in the case has been homeless, though it was announced last night that a place has now been found for her. It is said, by some sources, that this is only the worst of many similar cases on the books of the Eastern Area Health Authority. Similar cases have been on their books (or the books of the Eastern Health Board) for decades and still there is no place for the most vulnerable and afflicted in our society.
It is outrageous and it is unforgivable. The necessary resources in bricks and mortar, in personnel and in therapeutic skills, in simple co-ordination of services, still do not exist. There are, from time to time, problems that cannot be resolved. That is admitted. But these are not problems of that kind, however complex they may appear to be. The officials of the Department of Health, successive Ministers for Health, the Eastern Health Board and the recently re-structured Eastern Area Health Authority and all their officials must hang their heads in shame. Whatever they have been doing, it is inappropriate, insufficient and a disgrace.