Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The case of Grace involves shocking and horrific treatment of a severely disabled citizen for whom we, as a State, are responsible. What was done to Grace was done in our name. That is a difficult thing to say but it is true. When we give Tusla and the HSE the duty of care for an individual, they assume that duty in our name. We, as citizens of Ireland, allow them to care for individuals. We hope they will do that responsibly and with the care needs of those individuals uppermost, but we do not want to face up to it when that is not the case. Sadly, they are doing this in our name. We did not give Tusla or the HSE permission to leave Grace in a home where she was attacked and brutalised. When issues were raised by brave whistleblowers, they were subjected to abuse and had their careers ended by the same organisations about which they complained. All that was in our name. We have to make sure those organisations and the people they are protecting are not acting in our name. It needs to be plainly outlined to them that they are not acting on our behalf.

It is shocking that concerns were raised in 1992 and 1995. It seems we still have not out found why nothing happened at those times. Mr. Conor Dignam completed his report on 29 August 2016, before the Farrelly report. He queried why the Garda would not allow the publication of a review of the Devine and Resilience Ireland reports. Why could the Garda not engage with the tribunals and redact any problematic statements, thus facilitating the publication of the reports? In his report, he recommended:

The HSE should seek to put in place an arrangement or protocol with An Garda Síochána within which engagement and exploration of An Garda Síochána’s view that material should not be published in a particular matter can occur to facilitate the HSE making an independent decision in respect of publication.

That recommendation is very interesting and the date of the report particularly so. I met a whistleblower regarding Ard Gréine Court, County Donegal in October 2016, while the Dignam report was submitted in August 2016. That meeting led to the Brandon report on the abuse of 19 residents by a person referred to in the report as Brandon. That abuse went on with the knowledge of the management of the facility but was uncovered thanks to the diligence and concern of staff. In that case too, the management turned a blind eye to it in our name.

It seems the two whistleblowers in the Grace case went to the Department of Health and the HSE in 2009 to highlight the abuse of Grace out of concern for her safety but nothing was done apart from the whistleblowers being targeted by the Department and made to suffer. They lost their jobs on foot of this. This is a shocking litany of abuse and neglect - neglect on behalf of the Department and the HSE, which act in our name and should have stopped this savage abuse.

The similarities between the Brandon case and the Grace case are astounding, which is why the two have to be mentioned together. The events in question occurred years apart at different ends of the country, but the same things were going on. We still do not know whether there are other cases within the HSE that have been investigated and reported on, and that is the problem. The Minister of State has herself said that we need to know what exactly happened and who was responsible for any failures that may be uncovered by the commission in the Grace case. However, she has also rightly stated that it is imperative that lessons are learned in the context of the Brandon report. When will the Brandon report be published? When will the Garda be held accountable through the publication of the report? Let everyone see whether it has questions to answer in the context of the report. These questions need to be answered because they are relevant to how the State, acting on our behalf, has behaved. They are important in terms of showing the State is responding to and changing from how it has behaved in our name in the past. It is only by exposing and accepting the wrongs of the past that we can ensure they will not happen again. At this time, I am not overly confident they will not happen again.

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