Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I listened with interest to the Minister of State's speech. I do not believe that within the limited time available to me I will have an opportunity to address each of the topics raised by the him but will try to cover a number of them which are of considerable importance.

The first issue I wish to address is the holding of a children's rights referendum. It is now nine or ten weeks since the committee chaired by Deputy O'Rourke, of which I was privileged to be a member, published its report. I find extraordinary that not a single Cabinet Minister has yet gone on record agreeing with the proposed constitutional amendment and that the Government has not confirmed a date for the holding of a referendum.

In the context of all of the scandals and disasters surrounding our child care services, it is not good enough to speak about prioritising children and children's rights and needs. We are drowning in a plethora of reports and good intentions. What we need is Government commitment. I call on the Government to state exactly where it stands in regard to the holding of this referendum, which should be held in 2010. Is the wording, worked through over two years on a cross-party basis in a committee attended by the Minister of State, his predecessor and Minister and Ministers of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, accepted? If a referendum is to be held the work undertaken in good faith by members of that committee needs to be explained to the public. The reason for change needs to be understood. The benefits of change, in the public interest and interests of children, need to be clearly understood by those who will vote in a referendum.

Essentially what has happened is that the report has been published and so far buried by Government, with no commitment given. I am disappointed that the Minister of State yet again, in terms of the holding of the referendum and on the wording of an amendment, kicked to touch and simply genuflected in its direction and told us it is being considered by an internal Government committee. I do not believe this is good enough or that this matter is receiving the priority required to ensure we finally extend to children the constitutional protection to which they are entitled and to remove some of the discriminations inherent in our current law with regard to children as a consequence of revisions in our Constitution.

I listened to what the Minister of State had to say about our child care and protection services. I am conscious that he has been in his current position - he may correct me on this if I am wrong - for approximately two years and that he inherited the mess left by his predecessors and the failure of Fianna Fáil in Government over a decade to truly prioritise the needs of children and to ensure we had a proper functioning child care and protection service. The Minister of State referred to the HSE and legacy issues. The word "legacy" is a nice neat technical word for describing neglect and utter failure over a decade to put in place systems, procedures and structures that ensured the Children First child protection guidelines of 1999 were properly applied.

It is interesting to note a quote, included in the report by Geoffrey Shannon which the Government has accepted, by former Minister of State with special responsibility for children, Deputy Frank Fahey, on the occasion of the publication by the Department of Health and Children of the Child Protection Guidelines 1999 which states that the guidelines were to be applied consistently by health boards, Departments and organisations which provide services to children and that they were to support and guide health professionals, teachers, members of the Garda Síochána and the many people in sporting, cultural, community and voluntary organisations who come into regular contact with children and are therefore in a position of responsibility in recognising and responding to possible child abuse. This was at a time when it was the health boards who administered our child care and protection services.

We then enacted the Health Act 2004 which put in place the HSE. During the Second Stage debate on that Bill on 23 November 2004, the then and current Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, stated:

This is a once in a generation event. It is our chance to put in place modern effective management to make the best use of these tremendous resources we applying to health and to get clear value and clear results for that money. To achieve this, we badly needed clarity of roles and accountability, political responsibility for the Minister and management responsibility for the management.

Where are we today? We have a dysfunctional, chaotic child care and protection service, grossly mismanaged with a plethora of reports, one commissioned by the Minister of State's office, acknowledging that at no stage have the Children First, child care and protection guidelines been uniformly or properly applied across the country.

The Minister of State has acknowledged that in December 2009 he published a revised form of the child protection guidelines, which appeared quietly on a website. I find it extraordinary, in the context of the recognition that there was a need to revise the guidelines because of the failure of the HSE to properly apply them and the need to bring them up to date because of developments that occurred in the context of the creation of other agencies in the intervening period, that the Minister would come into this House on the last week in April, more than four months since they were put on his website, and inform us that they would be published and that finally something would be done to ensure the professionals working on the frontline with children are aware of the detail of the new child protection guidelines. How is that prioritising children and ensuring they are given the protection to which they are entitled?

I find especially questionable the ongoing, obsessive secrecy with regard to our child care and protection services. When a family, individual child or children are in trouble or difficulty and require support, of course their names should be kept confidential and they should have available assistance and services in a manner that does not produce widespread newspaper reports. However, we must have a service that is accountable and transparent. The Minister of State acknowledges that the reports published into the tragic deaths of Tracy Fay and David Foley are grossly inadequate in the context of accountability and other issues. The Minister of State was powerless to ensure appropriate reports were published.

I do not know in what parallel universe this is taking place, whether it is the fault of the Minister of State or the HSE. The HSE was able to publish a report into the death of Tracy Fay and appeared to operate in a universe as if the full report had never been laid before this House. Even more deplorable, the true story of what happened in the tragic life of Tracy Fay has been told but the true story of what happened to David Foley has been covered up. That is not about protecting his dignity or protecting confidentiality of family members. There is an over-riding obsession within the HSE to protect the reputation of those who have not properly delivered the service expected in accordance with their statutory duties and employment responsibilities. The failure to publish relates more to protecting those who have failed to do their jobs properly within the HSE, especially at management level, and who too frequently and tragically ignored recommendations made by hard-pressed, frontline social workers, who feared for the future of these two young people and who have feared for the future of other young people.

I put it to the Minster of State that we must bring accountability and transparency to the process. I am disappointed that in his speech today, the Minister of State omitted any reference of any description to a very important report. It is especially important in the context of the monitoring committee the Minister of State has declared established. I do not know whether the Minister of State has had sight of this report, whether it is yet another bloc of information the HSE has failed to furnish to him or whether this report has been deliberately covered up because it is yet another devastating indictment of child care and protection services, their structure and management and because it contains substantial recommendations for reform, which the HSE has no wish to make public for fear its capacity to implement such recommendations would be monitored and those involved would be held accountable. Perhaps this is the case and I am willing to give the Minister of State the benefit of the doubt in this regard. Perhaps he knows nothing of this report and he should be informed. However, if he is aware of this report the issue of accountability attaches to the Minister of State as well.

The report to which I refer was commissioned by the HSE, prepared by the PA Consulting group and furnished to the HSE in October 2009. The report which I am laying before the House today, because I believe it should be in the public domain, is entitled Inspiring Confidence in Children and Family Services: Putting Children First and Meaning It. That would represent a change. This report, commissioned by the HSE and furnished to it last October has not been widely circulated. It has never been published and we do not know what has been done on foot of it to implement the recommendations contained in it. We do not know if anyone was monitoring it. We do not know what recommendations have been accepted or rejected. We do not even know whether the Minister of State has seen this report.

I call on the Minister of State to inform the House in his reply today whether he has seen it. If he has seen it, why was it not referred to today in his statement to the House? I also wish to know why Geoffrey Shannon, a person of integrity and decency who has been re-appointed by the Government the child protection rapporteur, was not furnished with this report before he completed his report for 2009, the recommendations of which the Minister of State maintains the Government accepted. Geoffrey Shannon's report was only laid before the House and made publically available on 21 April.

One recommendation on page 68 in Geoffrey Shannon's report calls for an independent, national review of the current child protection system to be carried out. It recommends that review should involve examination of child protection data, international practice and consultations with stakeholders to identify the primary child protection concerns and areas in need of reform. This was published in April 2010 by the Minister of State. Interestingly, when the Minister of State informed us in his statement today that the recommendations made by Geoffrey Shannon had been accepted, he did not state that particular recommendation had been accepted. That recommendation, presumably made at the end of 2009 and published in April 2010, is interesting because it seems it had already been implemented by the HSE before it was made in the report. That is because of the job done by PA Consulting for the HSE, at a cost to the State of I do not know how much.

It is also interesting that some of the criticisms the report makes of the child care and protection service simply replicate what was contained in the review published by the Minister of State's Department, which was paid for by taxpayers at the end of July in 2008. However, this dates from October 2009. This report concludes that the structure and model of child care service is grossly inadequate and essentially incapable of providing proper protection for children.

The report emphasises something I have maintained for some time, something I believe is a disgrace and a scandal, that is, our child care and protection services are not child-centred. Essentially, the primary concern is the delivery system and structure of the HSE. I refer to the report, which states, "the needs of children are secondary to the needs of the delivery system".

Why was no reference made to this report? There is a need to let in the light if we are to have a truly functioning, accountable child care and protection service that can be monitored and which we can determine whether approvals have been made and whether defects are being addressed. Such reports as this should be in the public domain and it is extraordinary that this report is not in the public domain.

This attitude to the issue is not only within the HSE but within Government as well. On Tuesday this week, I tabled a question to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform calling on him to publish the protocol that exists between the HSE and the Garda Síochána to deal with missing children. The response was to refuse to publish it or furnish it to me on the basis that it was an operational matter between the Garda Síochána and the HSE. This is a protocol not even widely known among social workers related to what to do when a child in care goes missing. I refer to the websites of the children's authorities throughout England. There are similar protocols on such websites outlining the relationship between the police in England and the local authorities responsible for child welfare. It is extraordinary that the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Minister took the view this was something that should not be published. I believe the protocol should be available as well. That protocol has been received by me, although not through the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The report to which I have referred and the protocol are both publicly available on a Fine Gael website, www.letinthelight.ie. I assure the Minister of State that we will continue to do everything possible to campaign to ensure we have an accountable and properly transparent child care and protection service, within which the huge gaps and deficiencies are properly and adequately addressed.

The manner in which the HSE released truncated reports, purporting to summarise the tragedies that occurred in the lives of Tracey Fay and David Foley, to the media at 3 p.m. or 3.30 p.m. last Friday evening is a classic example of everything that is wrong with our child care and protection services. The truncated reports detailed the recommendations that were made and the pretence that was the HSE's response to these recommendations. The HSE published a statement on its website suggesting that everything is fine now that all of the issues have been addressed. In its response, the HSE failed to make any reference to the huge deficiencies that were detailed in a document last October. We do not know of any timeline for remedying those deficiencies. I appreciate that since this document was published, Mr. Phil Garland has been appointed as national director of children's services. I am not naive enough to believe that as a result of his appointment, everything is rosy in the garden, as presented by the HSE to the media late on Friday evening. The HSE hoped the reports it published last Friday would receive little notice and little publicity.

I am aware that for a long time, no one was able to identify who was in charge of the child care and protection services. We need a statutory change. The Minister of State or his successor should be put in charge. When I heard that Mr. Garland had been appointed, I welcomed it because I was familiar with his reputation. However, when I observed the manner in which these issues were dealt with last Friday, heard the public comments he made after Fine Gael published the report into the tragic death of Tracey Fay and noted his silence about this report, I started to fear that his good intentions were being overwhelmed by the appalling ethos that applies within the HSE, which involves keeping one's head down, saying nothing, keeping everything confidential, not letting in the light and ensuring nobody is ever held accountable for anything that goes wrong. I want the priority within the system, which is to preserve the system rather than to protect children, to be changed.

See this speech in context