Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I am aware of a number of the issues that relate to this Bill, especially the case of the Dublin Business School, and I have been in contact with many of the students in that regard. The school has hugely failed the students regarding their particular qualifications. Many of these students have spent big money and many have taken time out of their own jobs and have changed careers. Many have spent a lot of time on placement so they could qualify with the Dublin Business School, and they are now left in limbo without the proper, clear commitment that their issue will be fixed for them. I welcome any legislation that potentially helps their situation in the future.

I want to raise a couple of other issues that relate to this Bill and to look back on the historical nature of social care and how problems have existed with that. We need to make sure we have good legislation with good, strong regulation as well. I previously raised issues in the House regarding the internal case reviews and the practice assurance and service monitoring, PASM, reviews conducted by Tusla. In particular, I raised the case of Alice and I was shocked to discover at that time that the Government was not aware of the Alice report, despite the fact Alice had emailed and telephoned the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman's, office on many occasions prior to my raising it in the Dáil. He also stated that he was not aware of the 13 other internal case reviews that were completed. Surely, given the gravity of these reports, they should be shared between the Department and Tusla. I can only presume that the Minister has sought them from Tusla since I raised them here.

I know he met with Alice a few months ago, along with my parliamentary assistant, Luke Silke, and I want to thank him for that meeting with her. Alice is obviously a pseudonym that Tusla ascribed to this woman, who was abused in foster care in the State, physically, emotionally and sexually, in the 1980s and 1990s. There are a number of other issues with the Alice case that I would like to raise. I have already raised issues specifically regarding whether the other 16 foster children who lived in the same home with Alice and her siblings were interviewed. This question has not been answered and it is a key question that has to be answered, either by gardaí or social workers. It has been some time since I raised the questions and I am incredibly frustrated that they have not been answered. I would also like to know what happens currently if a child makes a disclosure to a social worker or to other children in homes. Again, I asked that question of the Minister a number of months ago and it has not been answered.

Second, when Alice's sister, Ms H, made a disclosure of sexual abuse within foster care, the Tusla report notes that the alleged abuser was interviewed, confessed to the abuse and a file was sent to the DPP, but the DPP decided not to prosecute.

Again, I cannot comprehend this. In recent months, Ms H applied for her files under the general data protection regulation, GDPR, and the Garda wrote back to her to say it had located a PULSE record number but the file was empty. It appears that no file was sent to the DPP. There remains confusion and mixed messages over exactly what happened to the file. This has caused untold hurt to Ms H, who is now an adult. Her wounds have been reopened. Will the Government trigger an investigation to determine where these files have gone and to ensure they are located and returned to Ms H? A PULSE file that has potentially been emptied is a very serious matter, as I am sure the Minister of State will agree.

In the case of Alice and her family, the State completely failed them. Alice was taken from her parents, where she had been abused, and was placed by the State in a foster care home in which she and her siblings endured further abuse. It is a nightmare scenario for any child to have gone through. Her birth mother wrote to the social workers about this abuse prior to her death in 1989 but, despite this, Alice continued to reside with the foster care family until March 1992, at which point she left the home with £10 in her pocket, bought a bus ticket and applied for a job in a nursing home. She built a life on a ten pound note. It is important to flag that she was never removed from that home. The only way she could escape it was by running away from the abuse. There were multiple case conferences and multiple occasions on which disclosures or additional information were made available to social workers and the Garda but no investigation was conducted for decades.

This case and the reports I have examined lead me to believe that either we have a cover-up in which the Garda and the social workers conspired to protect the foster parents from the allegations being made against them by the children, or else we have a country that loudly, clearly and collectively said it does not believe children simply because they are children. This report appeared to adopt an attitude of not believing any of these children. The problem is that since we have divulged this information here, the response of the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth will be that the Government shall ignore it until it goes away.

In recent years, Alice triggered a Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, investigation into the Garda station that failed to act on her abuse disclosures in the past. During that investigation, the Garda station wrote to a local authority and falsely told it Alice had committed an offence. I believe this action had a negative effect on her housing application. I will repeat that to ensure we all understand what is going on here. Alice triggered a GSOC investigation into a Garda station that failed to act on the abuse disclosures she gave in the past and, as a result, the Garda station wrote to a local authority falsely accusing Alice of an offence she had not committed and this caused difficulty for her in applying for a council house.

These are some of the hurdles Alice has faced in her campaign for justice. They have been extraordinary. I believe she has been actively persecuted by the State for speaking out against the system. In recent years, for example, Alice was referred for counselling and psychological assistance free of charge after Tusla took charge of this historic case. At the mental health unit to which she was referred, Alice spoke about the social worker who had failed to disclose what happened to her. She found out that social worker is actively employed by the HSE as a mental health worker. One can imagine the pain for Alice of not being believed in a scenario where she is with a psychiatrist and being told the lady in the room next door was the social worker who wronged her in the past. This is just another example of how she has been wronged. Alice was later to discover, through her incredible and comprehensive detective work, that a social worker from her past is currently married to a GSOC officer. I do not suggest for a minute this had any bearing on the GSOC investigation but for a woman who has gone through at least five or six wrongs by the State, it is another incredible situation to arise.

One of the saddest things about this story is that when Alice brought the information to us, she told us she had found out her birth mother had died. She found this out simply from being at mass and hearing the priest tell the congregation who was recently deceased. One can only imagine finding out in this manner that one's birth mother had died. This story highlights the difficulties so many children go through in this State. It also focuses on how important it is to have social workers who are of the highest standard and are governed by the best regulation.

I refer to another internal case review conducted by Tusla. Again, I have the permission of the victim, to whom the pseudonym Karen was given. Like Alice, Karen was left in an abusive home, with the knowledge of the social workers, and had to take it upon herself to run away from that home to escape the abuse. The time period was the same, that is, the late 1980s and early 1990s. In Karen's case, the alleged perpetrator was never prosecuted, despite a file nearly a foot thick being sent to the DPP. Like Alice, Karen received a small settlement from the HSE in a very secretive and questionable manner outside the courts. Like the Alice report, the report on Karen's case has discrepancies in what the Garda has said. I will focus on a couple of extracts from the report that I believe are important.

Karen first disclosed sexual abuse in 1984 at the age of nine. In a video I have seen of Karen as a child in 1986, in which she outlines to social workers the nature of the assaults on her, she describes how she was sexually assaulted repeatedly by her mother's partner. She was also sexually assaulted by the next-door neighbour. The Tusla review states that the neighbour was fined £75 for that incident. It is incredible that this was the level of justice achieved by Karen in that circumstance. Astonishingly, after the abuse disclosure, of which the local hospital, the local child guidance clinic, CGC, and the Garda were aware, Karen was sent back to the same home. In February 1985, she made further disclosures of sexual abuse. The local GP visited the home and Karen was admitted to the local hospital. When she was released after a short period and referred to the CGC, which was the equivalent of CAMHS at that time, she was released home again.

Karen escaped the abuse in 1986. The Tusla report states:

Karen had made numerous attempts to run away from home. On 31st August 1986, it was recorded that Karen ran away, stole a bike and travelled about a mile from her home before it rained. Cold and tired she saw a light on in a nearby house and when given access broke down and disclosed to the household owner about the alleged abuse.

One would hope this was the end of it but, no, it was not. Karen was put in the care of the State and after a brief spell in foster care, she was placed in an institution. In this State at the time, if you were a victim of sexual abuse, in many cases, you were placed in an institution. The review notes that Karen ran away from the institution and slept rough in Dublin, where she was exposed to prostitution and heavy drug use, although she did not partake in either.

This is the way children were treated in the past in this country. Every time we raise these questions, we are assured things are different now and that policies and safeguards have been strengthened. The legislation we are discussing must do right by the students of the Dublin Business School who have suffered, but it also must ensure we have the highest level of regulation of, and the best level of investment in, these resources and that we protect the children who currently are in the care of the State. That is not the case. I know this is not necessarily the Minister of State's particular area of authority but I ask that she or the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, meet with the two women I have discussed today. They and others like them have done their best to achieve a certain level of justice for themselves and, in many cases, after contacting Departments and State agencies and organisations, they were rebuffed and sent back home. In many cases, the only level of justice they might receive is that their case is discussed as a pseudonym case on the floor of the Dáil. That is wrong.

We must ensure we meet and speak to these adults. Equally, we must ensure that all the different hurdles they had to surmount and the wrongs they suffered, as well as those instances where the State let them down and An Garda Síochána, GSOC and Tusla did not do their jobs, are investigated and justice is provided for them. That should be the baseline standard for people in this State.

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