Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has not dealt with how many of the cases have been concluded. Subsequent to the question being tabled some of the people who made complaints have begun to get replies and to say what they received is beyond their worst expectations is probably an understatement. The letters I have seen from the panel represent a re-abuse of people badly let down by the system. I am speaking about cases of unexplained deaths which family members believe to be murder, as in the case of James Goonan, where the reply of the panel to the family was that it was very sorry for the family's loss but that the family's problem seemed to be that the Garda did not investigate the murder properly. The panel concluded that it would not ask the Garda to reinvestigate it, which would have been bad enough, but ask the Commissioner for a report. That was the outcome of a year's deliberation in the case of an horrific death of an elderly gentleman. A woman spoke to me this morning about sexual abuse allegations involving her two children which were not investigated. The answer she received was that the case went to the DPP and that was it. The whole point behind this was that people had problems with the investigative process, be it with the DPP or Garda, and to get an answer such as this exposes the entire system.

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