Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Justice Peter Charleton summarises:

...a rape allegation was conjured out of nowhere [...] When the mistake was discovered nearly a year later in 2014 when Maurice McCabe was even better known, the person who made it did all she could to rectify it. It was given continued life, notwithstanding her efforts, because of startling inefficiency [and indolence] within social services. In consequence, serious upset was caused to Maurice McCabe and his wife and family because the rape allegation took on a life of its own and resulted in a letter from TUSLA being delivered to his household accusing him of a rape offence that no one had ever laid against him.

What is profoundly worrying is that Tusla failed on two occasions - in 2006, when it failed to carry out a credibility assessment and interview Sergeant McCabe, and 2013, when Ms D attended Health Service Executive counselling, during which she reported the alleged incident to the counsellor. The counsellor typed a report on the incident into another report that she had used to detail an incident which had been reported to her by another client. The result was a jumbled written report that included details and names from Ms D's and Ms Y's allegations. To an attentive reader, it should have been obvious that there were considerable discrepancies in the document, that it seemed to involve two clients. This became known as the "cut and paste error" which resulted in a rape allegation being made against Sergeant McCabe.

During the course of the tribunal efforts were made to understand the system used by the HSE and later Tusla to handle child protection cases. Essentially, the system was based on "measuring the pressure", whereby high priority and urgent cases were handled immediately. An example was a child being kept in a cage at home. For all other cases - medium or low priority cases - files were transferred to a filing cabinet in the Cavan premises. When a social worker had free time, he or she went and plucked out a file. According to some social workers, there was system in place to do this chronologically or according to seriousness. According to others, it was totally random. The tribunal is satisfied that there was no system in place. Aside from the ramifications for the Sergeant McCabe case, this amounts to shocking incompetence on the part of Tusla. In the absence of a proper system to handle child protection cases, files can be left for indefinite periods of time and low priority cases can be handled ahead of medium priority cases. All of this can result in additional harm being perpetrated against children, in so far as it can result in Tusla failing to act on live cases in a timely fashion.

Are the Minister for Justice and Equality, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and the Taoiseach happy or comfortable with Ireland's child protection services? The tribunal of inquiry is a fact-finding body and it is not for it to oversee any reform or changes on foot of its findings. Implementation of changes on foot of the conclusions made in the report is a matter for the Government and we hope steps will be taken without delay to implement reform. Does the House agree that it is time we had a branch and root review of Tusla? It is not all a question of a shortage of social workers or management. It is a matter of checks and balances, responsibility and accountability and protecting vulnerable children. It is also a question of protecting claimants. It is obvious in reading the report that the system in Tusla is broken and in need of review.

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