The Madonna House report has already been criticised, and rightly, for what it does not say about the sexual abuse of the children placed in the care of that institution. But equally important is the omission of any detailed analysis of the stewardship of the Sisters of Charity who ran Madonna House and the Eastern Health Board which financed it. It is outrageous and utterly deplorable that children should have been sexually abused at Madonna House. It is widely understood, however, that sexual abuse his a furtive activity and usually invisible to those in charge until it is too late. This, while it does not excuse anything that happened, puts some aspects in context.
The report makes it clear that there were many other things wrong with Madonna House which should not have been invisible. A playgroup in which very small children had to spend excessive hours against the expressed wishes of the playgroup staff; an almost complete failure to prepare or maintain contact with children leaving Madonna House at 16 after spending most of their lives there; allegations by former residents that children were deprived of food, made to wear their pyjamas all day and slapped - should these things have been invisible?
Failure to provide training for unqualified staff; the refusal by the Department of Education to pay teachers' salaries because it fundamentally disagreed with children being educated in an institution should these things have been invisible too?
Why were these shortcomings not seen and addressed by the Sisters of Charity and the Eastern Health Board? The inquiry team recommended the closure of Madonna House while it was still carrying out its investigation. The inquiry was set up by the Sisters of Charity and chaired by a former programme manager with the Eastern Health Board. Why did these matters not become visible until the inquiry came into being? Who, one might ask, was minding the shop? Is the answer that no one was?
These are matters of legitimate public concern, and the anxiety raised by the initial disclosures about the institution has been compounded by the hamfisted way in which the report has been subsequently handled. Mr Austin Currie, the responsible Minister, has published an incomplete version. Mr Currie says that this was on the advice of the Attorney General. Few people will find it credible that it was beyond the wit of the Department of Health or its lawyers to draft a version of the chapters in question that would have met the legal objections. Mr Currie, disappointingly, is not showing himself as Minister with a great deal of imagination.
Legal constraints, it was alleged, "prevented" the publication of the report of the inquiry into the Kelly Fitzgerald case. There was no difficulty in removing these constraints when the Oireachtas Committee on the Family placed the report before the Fail and gave it the protection of privilege. The report, which was deeply critical of the Western Health Board, was thus made available to the public.
The Committee may attempt to do the same thing with the Madonna House report. It is important that it should succeed. If it does and Mr Currie can help by providing it with a copy of the unexpurgated report it will be enlightening to see where blame is laid in the missing chapters, in particular the one headed Management and operation of Madonna House.