Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for affording me the opportunity to raise the matter. All children are vulnerable but particular safeguards are required for children with intellectual disability. The report I wish to raise is that of Dr. Kevin McCoy on the Western Health Board inquiry into the Brothers of Charity services in Galway, and it is disturbing for a whole series of reasons. One of these has not come to any serious public notice.

In March 1999 an inquiry team was put in place at the request of the Brothers of Charity to examine serious allegations of physical and sexual abuse of many children who suffered an intellectual disability and who had been cared for within institutions run by the Brothers of Charity in Galway. It is extraordinary that this commission of inquiry was appointed in March 1999 but by mid 2001 every member appointed to it had resigned. All that was left was the chairperson, and two of the people appointed to the inquiry by the Western Health Board had resigned by the middle of summer 1999.

It has taken an unacceptable period for the report to be published, some nine years from the initiation of the inquiry. If the victims of abuse had not been persons of intellectual disability, there would have been a public scandal a number of years ago and a demand for publication.

I want an inquiry by the Department on what happened with this inquiry team. Why had they all resigned by August 2001 and why was this not made public knowledge? Why did the chairman apparently struggle on and survive until January or February 2006 before resigning? Dr. McCoy, who finally completed the report, was given the task in spring 2004 of providing assistance and finally piecing together the information to allow a report to be published in November 2007.

In the context of serious allegations of sexual and physical abuse of people with intellectual disability, it is entirely unacceptable that it took this length of time to publish this report. I demand an inquiry into the manner in which the Western Health Board and later the HSE approached the task.

The report itself details yet another tragic litany of abuse but we are given absolutely no information. Despite taking almost nine years for it to be published, only 21 victims of alleged abuse were dealt with, although 135 residents in Brothers of Charity institutions have sought compensation through the redress board for alleged abuse of a sexual nature.

The report did not travel the distance and produce the comprehensive information it was obliged to. It contains a variety of recommendations, some of which have become familiar to Members because they are a mirror image of recommendations produced in other reports into the abuse of children in institutions. All that makes this different is that it applies to children who have an intellectual disability.

This report should have been published by approximately 2001 at the latest, and these recommendations should have been introduced long ago. I call on the Minister to ensure we have national standards put in place and inspections conducted in residential centres and community homes for children and adults with disabilities. This has been promised since the mid 1990s but nothing has been done.

There are currently 400 children with disabilities living in residential settings whose homes are not inspected and where there are no applicable national care standards. There are applicable standards for children taken into care under the Children Acts, as well as an inspectorate system. We do not have it for those who have a disability.

I want an accountable and transparent system which protects the children in this country. I call on the Minister to take the necessary initiative to give this the priority the Western Health Board and HSE in this case have failed to give. Will the Minister detail to this House the specific action being taken to ensure the detailed recommendations contained in the report will be implemented?

There is another extremely disturbing aspect of the report. Identified in the report not personally but by number are 18 people who engaged in physical and sexual abuse. Eight of them have since died, two have been prosecuted and eight have never been prosecuted. I want to know why prosecutions were not taken in those incidences.

I would like to posit a brief theory as to why this is the case. In the courts in October we saw a tragic case of a 20-year-old adult with Down's syndrome in circumstances in which allegations of sexual assault were taken against an individual. Those allegations were dismissed by our courts because the judge hearing the case took the view that the person suffering from Down's syndrome did not have the intellectual capacity to give evidence and deal with cross-examination. That court has laid down a ruling that creates a very serious problem. It indicates to predators that it is open season on those who suffer disability and cannot provide evidence in our court system. There is an urgent need to enact emergency legislation to address that issue and protect the people who are so vulnerable because they suffer from a disability. We are in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights in this area. It is reasonable to posit that no prosecutions were not taken against eight of the people, who, it is accepted, perpetrated sexual and physical abuse against intellectually disabled children referred to in the report, because the prosecution authorities feared the prosecutions would fail for the reason the prosecution failed in the case I have identified. I ask the Government to address the issue as an urgent matter to protect persons who suffer from disability.

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