Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Has the Minister taken appropriate steps to establish why the national office would have instructed staff at Rath na nÓg to apply a lock-up situation there each night during the hours from 9 p.m. until 7.30 a.m. the next day? This is the core of the objections HIQA had, yet the staff were working not on their own volition but in response to a directive they had received. That directive has been defended by Mr. Jeyes, indicating that in his view any reasonable parent would behave in exactly the same way. I take a very different view. If there were real difficulties at Rath na nÓg, it is most likely that they were consequent on inappropriate placements or an inappropriate case mix rather than any failure or falling down, as it were, on the part of the highly qualified and experienced staff there. No matter how well trained and how well motivated the staff were, once the children were placed under lock and key, something that was never part of the institution in terms of that facility given that it was an open unit, and regardless of whatever relationships were being built upon, it was clear the young people were going to view those highly trained, highly professional and dedicated staff as their jailers and the relationship would collapse.

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