John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join with everybody who has spoken so far in this brief debate and express my horror and revulsion at the reports that have emerged in the past week or ten days of abuse and neglect in this particular home in the south east region. I fully support and endorse the Government's decision to set up a statutory inquiry to ascertain the full facts and information surrounding what sounds like an horrific story. I wish Mr. Dignam very well in his task of ongoing review.

A number of factors make the information that has come into the public domain particularly appalling in this case. I am 37 years old and thought, as I drove to Dublin today, that for all my adult life, effectively, there has been at a different times different stories of abuse and neglect. We all hoped, I suppose, that the worst of those stories were over.

As we have ascertained, however, media sources indicate that may not be the case. I am conscious that a Garda investigation is ongoing, and we all have a duty to be careful about what we say in this House.

While I am not a parent, I do have a nine-year-old nephew and godson who cannot speak. I know that my brother, his wife and their family, including the extended family, invest so much love and attention in his care. The thought that somebody who cannot verbalise what is happening could have been subjected to such neglect and abuse brings this set of facts to a whole different level. In the case of a child with special needs of any description, the matter of trust is even more important than in the lives of other children. Given the facts that have emerged in this case, that trust has been shattered in so many ways and at so many levels.

It is incumbent on the State to ensure the full facts of this case emerge as soon as possible. In that way, the special efforts of the many loving people who open their homes as foster parents, and who do such great - in many cases unrewarded - work for children, will not be tarnished by this shocking case that has emerged in recent days. There is a moral obligation on the HSE, which was effectively acting in loco parentis, to explain the error. Error is too insignificant a word to describe the apparent oversight of this girl's existence, who we now call Grace. She was in care, yet the system seems to have been oblivious to her very existence. Those facts bring this situation to an appalling level, even in light of what has emerged in the past 25 years concerning other abuse cases.

I hope that Mr. Dignam will be soon in a position to give his initial report, and that shortly thereafter the Oireachtas will be able to establish a statutory inquiry so that we can get to the bottom of this appalling situation.

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