Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

This is a difficult issue to speak about. This week has been a very difficult time. The mirror is showing us how we did not care for children, did not want certain children and let them die and that we did not provide due care for this child, this young adult, this person, Grace. It reflects badly on all of us and our society. We have an obligation to try to do our best to make sure the level of abuse that has been exposed does not happen again. I was listening to an earlier contribution about conference calls. I have personal experience as a parent of a child with a disability. The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, will know that experience as well. I was thinking of and reflecting on our own experience when readying myself to speak on this case and it was not a positive one where State psychological services were concerned. While I stand up for and celebrate our State in many ways, our own family experience regarding the provision of psychological services in assessing our son and in looking for placement, services and so on would not give great confidence. One of the biggest concerns from our experience is something similar to what we are seeing here. It is a sense that the system itself was going to cover the system. We were in conference calls. They were an incredible waste of time. Some 12 people were paid significantly and because, in our experience, they were not really addressing the issues that we were facing, we felt that it was a waste. There was also an acute sensation in the waiting room where other families were facing similar circumstances. There was a sense that the family was not quite trusted, quite right or up to speed with the approach taken by the psychological and social services. In our own family, we were strong enough to stand up for our rights and our son. We thought in our heart and asked many times what happens if one is not so sure or confident. Some might call this arrogant. If one was not quite of that same strength, one might be treated in the way that we have seen Grace's mother being treated over all these years. This is not an isolated incidence. There is a culture within the State psychological and social care services that needs to change. While I welcome a wider commission and investigation into the specifics of this case, it raises questions about the overall quality and culture within the care services for people with disability. There are many good things. It is not all bad. We have subsequently found significant services for our son and brilliant people within the system.

We need to create a system that really cares and is not a box-ticking exercise of protecting against legal or other regulatory rules and having everything be done by the book. We need a system that is creative and caring to each individual in an innovative way. We need a system where the abuses, as occurred in this case, are not covered up. That is the real story. One of the shocking things in Grace's case is the number of times it was drawn to the attention of the system but the system sought to protect itself and ignored the cries of, and in this case the bruises on, the individual. The international reports and Garda reports were all ignored. The first thing we need to change in our system is to stop it from trying to protect itself where it is not delivering to the high standards we would expect of it. As a parent, and the Minister of State would know this experience personally, the real fear is about what happens after the child turns 18. It seems to us, as parents of children who are approaching 18, that there is a cliff where one fears that many of the services, many of which are very good, will not be there as that child enters adulthood. That is why Grace resonates with many people. It is the sense of believing that the child, the young person, the adult was in safe care, when the opposite was the case. It is that fear that every parent, everyone related and everyone with an interest in disability has and which chills them to the bone. The care we hope will be there in community, foster care or other systems must be something in which we have 100% faith. That faith has been lost in this case. We need to restore it in everything we do.

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