Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I feel nauseated. I thank Deputy McGuinness. We did not think it was appropriate, given the profound nature of the disability, what has happened and the abuse, to give him a round of applause but he certainly deserves one. I feel nauseated. I was on the Committee of Public Accounts and following his very good work and the work of the committee, including Deputy Deasy. The current Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, was Chair at the time. It is testimony to Deputy McGuinness's creativity and the creativity of the committee that he found a way to get the whistleblowers to come before it. We also heard from the whistleblowers. It is something that has never left me and I thank Deputy McGuinness.

The cost of the Farrelly commission to date is just over €5.6 million. To be precise, it is €5,640,451.97, and we still do not know about one of the primary terms of reference with regard to the care and abuse of Grace. We do not know about the treatment of the whistleblowers who have been mentioned, or about their allegations that there was suppression of these events. We do not know anything about how they were punished as a result of coming forward. On page 4 of the second report we are informed that principal tasks remain and there is no indication as to when the report will be completed. There is a reference to previous reports and that eight interim reports have been published. Indeed, they have not. I am aware of five. I can get five of them but not the other three.

The Minister of State is hands on, her heart is in the right place and she works very hard but the speech she gave today is an insult. It is an insult to the Dáil, it is an insult to Grace and to the 46 other children. At the very least, I would have expected the senior Minister to be here given the gravity of the topic and that what the two substantial interim reports, separate from the other eight, are saying to date would have been set out. I also expected to hear the reason three of the other eight reports have not been published and a date for the completion of the Farrelly report. At the very least I expected the findings to date to be set out.

Deputy McGuinness gave the background to this and he did so very well. What we know is that back in 2009 the brave whistleblowers came forward, although concerns were known well before that. That led to the establishment of the Devine investigation to look at the care, the service problems and the cause of those problems. This led to Resilience Ireland, which I will come back to if I have time. The Resilience Ireland report was to look at the 46 others who were placed there. This was followed by the Dignam report to review the previous two reports and look at their procurement and the reasons for their non-publication. I will be careful with my words with regard to Resilience, although I have lost all sense of carefulness because of the nausea overpowering me at that narrative of what is going on. The Resilience company was formed with employees who worked previously for the health executive. On top of this, we had the Deloitte report that came about as a result of the presentation to the Committee of Public Accounts. That report was published on 15 September 2017. It looked at the money given to the service provider where Grace went eventually because the service provider felt it was not getting sufficient funds to look after her and felt it was being targeted.

What is interesting about these reports is that the Devine report was from March 2012. Deputy Ó Cathasaigh said we all knew but let us see what happened with the reports. The Devine report was completed in March 2012 but not published until February 2017. The Resilience report was completed in March 2015 but not published until 2017. The Conor Dignam report was completed on 29 August 2016. This was a review of certain matters relating to a disability service. It was as a result of this report, which was not published until June 2019 but given to the health board in 2016, that we got the other reports. All of the time, there was a Garda investigation similar to what is happening in Donegal, as outlined by my colleague Deputy Pringle, when there were no reasons for that at all. Conor Dignam clearly pointed this out. As I have said, on top of these reports we had eight interim reports, some of which are available, and two substantial reports, which the Department did not see important enough to set out today. The commission was established in 2017. As has been said, it was to report in 2018. Here we are in 2021, four and a half years later, and there is no sign of a final report.

Grace was a vulnerable child and a vulnerable adult with serious learning difficulties. We can portray her this way. Certainly she was a child and a woman that as of right deserved the protection of the State, which the State utterly failed to give. Let me give the human side of Grace. Grace was born on 24 November 1978. Her birthday will be coming up shortly. Grace was fostered in Wicklow to very good foster parents, who took a great interest in her despite their own difficulties and the mother's health problems. In preparation for a case conference on 27 January 1989, the sister in charge at the Wicklow school she attended prepared a report. The report showed that Grace had started in the Wicklow school on 14 February - how ironic is this - on 14 February 1984 and was in the senior class. The report provides a picture in time of Grace when she was 11. It states she was a pretty 11-year-old girl with long fair hair and a pale complexion. It states that her mobility was good and that she loved swimming and was very good at it. It states she loved all the playground activities and the climbing frame and the indoor trampoline. It states she still needed help with ball games and loved musical play. The last time Grace attended school was shortly after this. After this, there was no schooling and no attendance at services.

There are many psychologists' reports. In addition to Grace's disabilities they set out her capabilities, particularly the alternative strategies needed given her absence of language. It never happened, of course. Her absence of language is all the more ironic given the thousands of words we now have in the various reports that have cost millions, all for the purpose of protecting the system even now. The reports are protecting the system and not exposing the system or seeking to change it but trying to find ways to protect the system. It is even more nauseating that this is still happening.

Some of the findings the Department of Health failed to set out in the Minister of State's speech are the concluding observations in the second report, the ongoing lack of clarity about Grace's legal status, delays, indecision and U-turns, a lack of co-ordination and follow-through, paralysis in the interconnection between care decisions and legal considerations, an inconsistent approach to monitoring, ongoing confusion and misunderstanding and misconceptions about the role and legal status of Mr. and Mrs. X and Grace's mother with respect to decision-making.

Let me mention Mr. and Mrs. X. Their marital status is immaterial for me but the health board was at all times unaware of their marital status and believed that they were married. It never checked up on the fact that Mrs. X said that she was a registered childminder or on the criminal history. What is even more astounding and is perhaps captured in another pen picture is that when Mr. X died in June 2000 or 2001, which I will come back to, the health board and all of the caring professions were unaware that he was dead until the following February. Nobody saw fit to inform it, not least Mrs. X. I am making no finding as to Mrs. X but am simply pointing this out.

To add to this confusion the interim reports, Nos. 1 and 2, have the wrong dates. They talk about Mr. X dying in June 2000 and then of him dying in 2001. The point being that they were unaware from June until the following February.

I will finish up with some of the flavours of the comments on this report, as in: “case falling through the cracks and out of sight”, that it was "an outlier post" in respect of the disability posts; “ongoing systemic failure”, concern about repeated absences not followed up, “The correspondence simply fell into the sand”, “a flawed approach" continued, “a further missed opportunity”, “Grace's case recedes again”, “no system at the time to stop cases from falling through the cracks”, “a fire brigade service”, “Grace’s case goes into abeyance”, “sort of left up in the air”, and, of course, Mrs. X’s comment: “over my dead body" would Grace leave, and then other missed opportunities and so it goes on.

I will finish by paying tribute to the whistleblowers because without them, their courage and persistence, we would have no reports. As one can see from most of the reports, they are to protect the system. As has been outlined by Deputy McGuinness, the whistleblowers have suffered dreadfully and certainly, if we go by that, then nobody else is ever going to go come forward. I join in his call to have a full and proper debate in here with the senior Minister on the two substantial interim reports that have been published and to seek an explanation as to why only five of the eight others are available. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for his forbearance.

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