James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleague, Deputy Shatter, for bringing out this new report. When the anger subsides, there is a sense of sadness that time and again, reports are suppressed, redacted and delayed. Cui bono - to whose benefit? Certainly, it is not to the benefit of children, nor to memory of those who died in care.

I will start with a series of questions. I do not wish to be overly cynical, but I wonder will we get answers. Why are the reports being suppressed? Why are they taking so long to come to light? Why are children being put at risk? Why are there not sufficient social workers? Why do children not have a constant key worker?

At a talk given by Fr. Peter McVerry, who deals with the homeless, the other night in Donabate organised by Donabate and Portrane Community Council he informed us in a simple way about some of the difficulties that children and homeless people have, their lack of self-esteem and their sense of worthlessness. Often their families let them down and did not care for them. They then go into what we call euphemistically "care" and find that they are sent from Billy to Jack, not knowing until the last minute where they will sleep that night. One person had 40 different workers involved in his case and God knows how many different bed and breakfast accommodations he stayed in over his life, which was a short one. It is all the more sad when one considers that he volunteered to go into care. The message he got on a daily basis from our care services and from us was that we did not care. We did not care enough to have one person to whom he could turn, with whom he could have a bond, with whom he could trust, and whom he could feel respected and cared for him. The sad fact is he is not just one, but one of many.

The importance that all psychiatrists and psychologists attach to a child's need in terms of his or her normal development to have someone to whom he or she can turn is well known, and all the problems that arise from not having that person as a constant are also well known. This is not a child-friendly service, as if there was any need for me to say it. The reports that we have seen to date prove that beyond doubt. There are many good people working within the service but they lack a cohesive structure.

The report states, better than I ever could, what is wrong with this system. There is no effective early intervention. Many of the children who become homeless and whose parents care for them could have remained at home had the intervention taken place in the home earlier to support that child and to support the parents to support the child, but that is not happening. We do not even have sufficient inpatient beds for children and adolescents with mental health issues, which is another reason people end up homeless and on the street. Those are matters we need to look at and about which we can do something.

This report shows a chaotic system. It states that it is unclear where responsibility, authority and accountability lies for the children and family services, particularly at local level. There is an echo of that throughout the HSE. The Fitzgerald report showed that people did not know what their jobs were and did not know who was reporting to whom. We should not be surprised to see it in our child care services.

I will not attack the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, personally about this. He has a duty of care and I want to know by the time these statements are finished his plan to improve the situation. Much of this he has inherited and I am not laying it at his door. From this point on, he must be seen to be proactive, to change this and to be open and transparent. Who gains by all of this secrecy? The children do not.

The report also states that at all levels of the delivery system people can have responsibility without corresponding authority, that supports for social workers and their managers are undervalued, and that there is inconsistent application of practice, protection and supports. It states that the service is not managed based on current intelligence that there is no single remedy or quick fix. That seems to be an approach that is taken continually. It states that the scale of the change is not to be underestimated and ultimately requires fundamental change at corporate and individual level to deliver and support services.

I want to move on to other parts of the report. It states that there is no communication, no proper protocols, no planning for the forward movement of a child in care through the system. The reports states that the authors' finding that the framework for child protection is clearly articulated at national level through Children First but that the HSE has struggled to convert this national framework to a sensible and understandable model for delivering child protection that reflects international experience and research.

The report states that the HSE has still not agreed how it will implement the agenda for children services. It states that the absence of a clear model for delivering child protection in the context of wider children and family supports is a major constraint on the current delivery. It goes on and on. It state, for example, that the needs of children come second to the demands of the service, and that collaboration between services and agencies is uneven and for the most part unacceptable from the perspective of the child.

The HSE was set up several years ago with the idea of having one body to deliver a uniformity of care and service throughout the country, yet what we find is disfunctionality and outcomes predicted on geography. It has failed at every level to do what it was set up to do. I ask the Minister of State to help us and inform the House and the people as to how he will address this. This requires fundamental change. One of the fundamental matters is that all of the reports should be made available.

When the Comptroller and Auditor General points out that he does not know whether PPARS cost €180 million, €200 million or €220 million and no one is held responsible, is there an echo when the Minister of State tells the Dáil in March that there were 20 children in care who died and a few days later that figure rises to 23? Do we know how many have died in care?

How can we learn from all our mistakes if reports are continually suppressed? How can we, as Deputy Shatter already pointed out, have a situation where somebody is asked to do a review and recommends a full review without knowing that a full review has already been done a year before? It is an insult to the individual concerned and to the children. That is at a senior management level and, I suspect, at a political level too.

Many people and some of the previous speakers want to lay all of this at the doorstep of the clerics in some indirect fashion. I do not. I blame the lack of accountability in public life, the lack of transparency and the lack of fairness.

This report was made available because, yet again, Deputy Shatter sought it out and made it available. I do not understand why the Minister of State does not come up front and make such reports available. He should open up the debate and let in the light on children, as the campaign says. He should bring consistency to how the HSE delivers services, strengthen, collaborate and provide supports for people working with children, develop an intelligence-led system that uses data currently available and simplify and make clear the key roles and responsibilities. We must get away from the system, described by a man called Balint many years ago as this collusion of anonymity, which states: "I am not responsible for that part, they are not responsible for this part and he was not responsible." The result is children die and children who survive care end up as dysfunctional adults and may be homeless for years. It is time this society grasped the nettle and took a new approach. This is within the gift of the Minister of State by ensuring that all reports are made available and published. There should there be an open, frank and public debate.

The Children's Rights Alliance issued a statement on 9 March:

Statistics on preventable or unusual child deaths and the findings and learnings from inquiries are not systematically gathered and hence it is not possible to track and evaluate cases, establish trends and give clear recommendations on how such deaths could be prevented. Ultimately, information about the death of one child may lead to the prevention of another.

This is a key point.

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