Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I refer to the commitment to child protection in the programme for Government. Anyone who watched "Prime Time" last night could only have been sickened and appalled by what was allowed to happen in that County Galway foster home. We have become almost numb to the repetition of such cases; the case of Grace last year was mentioned earlier.

The Galway case happened relatively recently. On the Taoiseach's reply to Deputy McDonald, I am not as convinced that it is something we can say happened before 2011 and is not going to happen now. There is something systemically wrong with how we deal with child protection. There have been too many cases and they have happened too recently. The Taoiseach referred to the industrial schools of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and said they were different cases. A review is being undertaken but there is a case for a special commission to establish if our methodologies and models of care correct. Without casting aspersions on individuals we should ask if our models of monitoring, both in foster care and other settings, are appropriate. The bottom line in this case is that there were really credible grounds for removing these children from this care setting but it did not happen. Just because it happened in 2006 does not mean it could not happen now, that is my concern. We are aware of other cases in the pipeline and have raised these in the House. We need to stand back and ask ourselves some hard questions without partisan comment as this has nothing to do with politics, namely, are our systems, methodologies and approach to acting adequate, when alarms are sounded and credible claims are made about children being at risk? Do our systems respond adequately to those alarm bells ringing? We facilitated the panel review but a commission of investigation on this may be necessary or some broader commission under the auspices of Tusla and others, in order to stand back and ask hard questions of whether we are protecting children adequately.

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