Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I thank the Minister for the way she went about making arrangements for this debate. I also offer my condolences to her and her family.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Farrelly commission report on behalf of the Labour Party. At the heart of this scandal are two matters, namely Grace and other vulnerable children and how they were maliciously failed by the State and those employed to care for them. I pay tribute to lain Smith and, of course, Paula, the brave whistleblowers who made a protected disclosure in 2009 that brought this issue to light and who fought to protect Grace. I also acknowledge John Deasy, John McGuinness, Daniel McConnell, Fergus Finlay, Colm Ó Mongáin and the members of the Committee of Public Accounts, all of whom campaigned with determination and compassion to bring this story to light. The fiasco of what happened during the commission and the outcome of the report raise serious questions for us, as legislators, for the Government and for State agencies.

The profound lack of public accountability must be addressed. Having spent millions of euro, many of us are at a loss as to the failure to vindicate the rights of Grace and set out clearly what happened to her, who was responsible and why it happened. The whistleblower Paula summed up the outcome on RTÉ’s “Today with Claire Byrne” show, by stating:

I think the HSE and the people named in the report who failed Grace must be absolutely delighted this week by the narrative and the spin that's being peddled in relation to that. I say people very deliberately here because it suits them for us to talk about systemic failures, but the system did not fail Grace. People working in our health services failed Grace.

The Farrelly report details the individual and system failures that led to a devastating and traumatic impact on Grace. There was clear gross neglect, a breach of Grace’s basic human rights and dignity. The report highlights the cold and bureaucratic machine that many disabled people, their families and whistleblowers face. It is an uncaring system. If this is how the system operated and how the State met its responsibilities, then we need a total reset. We need a new approach to care that is truly reflective of the rights of disabled people, one that is based on the values of dignity, transparency and compassion.

This is not a watershed moment because we have had these reports before. We had the report on the Emily case in 2023. There is the ongoing Brandon case. Now we have the Grace case. This is not a watershed moment. A tidal wave of reform is needed. Without political will and systemic reform, tragedies like that involving Grace can and will happen again. Those in the disabled community, their families and advocates need reassurance from the Government that it will prioritise adult safeguarding legislation. We are still waiting on the national disability strategy, however. The protection of liberty safeguards Bill and the Adult Safeguarding Bill have not been the subject of the kind of urgency that is needed. We need to provide the legislation and mechanisms in which we can fully support people with disabilities and safeguard them against harm.

There is to be no phase 2 of the commission. This will be distressing to other families who have many unanswered questions. The risk of this happening was made clear by the Labour Party in 2017 when the commission was established. The decision to not proceed with part X raises serious questions about justice because the families concerned have known for some time their opportunity for truth and accountability would be hindered.

Many of the witnesses who gave evidence to the commission found it to be adversarial. It was if they were on trial. Seven years ago, the commission was granted a 12-month extension around the time it was due to submit its final phase 1 report. In May 2018, former Deputy Brendan Howlin raised with the then Government in the Dáil concerns that had been expressed by victims’ families of the highly confrontational and adversarial nature of the commission's work, as reported in the Irish Examiner. One individual said:

We are shocked at how we have been attacked, accused almost of telling mistruths. This was not what we were expected. It has been horrendous.

In the Dáil at that time, we highlighted to the Government the concerns of the families of victims of further delays in investigating their treatment. Seven years ago, the Government knew about the issues at the heart of this commission. It no doubt should have informed us that the commission would not establish a finding that Grace was subject to physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect in the provision of food and sustenance. It made a finding of neglect in the standard of care provided, a lack of attention on dental care and financial mismanagement by Mrs. X, however.

While I do not intend to go into the detail of these issues, there should be no hiding from the problems with the commission that have been known in some form or other for many years and that have been articulated publicly by others since the publication of the report about the lack of findings on these key issues. As Fergus Finlay highlighted in his article in Irish Examiner on Saturday 19 April:

We will never know why internal HSE reports raised serious anxiety about sexual abuse of Grace, but the Farrelly Report dismissed that entirely, saying it found no evidence.

He also outlined what happened to a resident of X, Fran, and the experience of her mother, Nuala, when she was a witness to the commission. I urge everyone to read the article. It spells out how survivors of abuse and their families have once again been let down by the State and the commission. Mr. Finlay concludes the article by asking who will apologise to all of them for what happened.

The promise of a non-statutory safeguarding exercise must be delivered and will facilitate these families because they have been let down. The Government must provide the full details on this exercise in the interest of transparency and to begin to rebuild trust with the people failed by the State and other agencies. This exercise needs to be fully independent of Government, and an independent expert must be appointed.

We must remember that it was the whistleblowers who fought tooth and nail to bring these failings to light and to protect Grace. It was deeply depressing to hear lain Smith detail on radio the toll it took on him emotionally and financially and the impact it had on his family. We need more whistleblowers, not fewer. That is why the Labour Party introduced legislation to protect them. If the perception is allowed to remain that the State will try to crush you for speaking up, then we need to seriously review the protections in place. We must now question the suitability of commission of inquiries into safeguarding issues. The Irish Association of Social Workers has noted that this points to a process which cannot facilitate the necessary reflection and dialogue needed to ensure we understand what happened to Grace and how we can learn from it.

An astounding situation has also occurred whereby the General Solicitor for Minors and Wards of Court, Marie-Claire Butler, has issued a statement on the case. Such an occurrence is very rare. Ms Butler has clarified that while extensive legal submissions were made on behalf of Grace, these were not included or referred to in the report.

This is extremely disappointing and most likely retraumatising for Grace and the families involved. It would be welcome if the commission came before the committee on health or the committee on children to clarify why these legal submissions were not included or referenced. At a minimum, a public statement should be made. Failing that, serious consideration should be given to the call by the special rapporteur on child protection for an investigation into what happened at the inquiry because we have heard the concerns of the families, the whistleblowers and now Ms Butler.

This is also an extremely difficult report to read not just in terms of its content, but also its accessibility. We have more than 2,000 pages, with no executive summary and no summary of the findings. Did the commission at any point consider the disabled community when compiling this report? An easy-to-read version should have at least been provided, similar to those developed by Inclusion Ireland. It is so disappointing that we have a report on how the State and many others failed Grace, someone who has a disability, and yet no one considered how to communicate these findings to a person with a disability. This again points to the need to reconsider our approach to dealing with safeguarding issues. The commission has not delivered justice for Grace; it has just pushed justice further away for her and all those families impacted. We in Labour are concerned at how long inquiries now take. It is not just the inquiry carried out by the Farrelly commission; we saw similar problems with the inquiries into NAMA and the IBRC and we know about the long walk to justice for the Stardust families.

In our manifesto, we outlined a series of proposals to look at new approaches to provide adequate paths to truth, accountability and justice. If there is one positive outcome from this commission, it should be reforms to develop a new model of inquiry, with full disclosure and candour, carried out in a non-adversarial way. l call on the Government to address the failure of the commission model by establishing an expert group to consider the current processes we have and how to reform them to ensure a quicker path to justice for relatives and survivors. We must develop legislation to allow for the appointment of a parliamentary inspector, as used in Australia, as an alternative to tribunals and commissions of inquiry for issues such as those the Commission of Investigation into the IBRC examined. The Government should request that the Law Reform Commission consider the legislative framework governing statutory inquiries and tribunals tied into the proposed work of the expert group.

Before I conclude, I want to recall the debate when the terms of reference for the Farrelly commission were agreed in this House back in 2017. My former colleague Brendan Howlin stated this should not have been just an inquiry into the care provided to Grace. Rather, it should have been an inquiry into the care provided by the South Eastern Health Board, and the care it provided by the use of placements with Family X, its monitoring of that care and its response to any concerns, not just about Grace but the other 47 placements too. It should have been an inquiry like that into the X case. Those eyewitnesses and their stories have been silenced by the decision not to pursue the next phase. This report does not provide justice for Grace, and the tortuous delays mean the other cases will not now be addressed.

After spending approximately €37 million and over a decade on reports and inquiries, no one has yet been formally held accountable. What we had were the type of cover-up and secrecy so often found at the heart of State failings. There was a desire to protect institutional reputation and avoid anyone being held accountable.

I will close by repeating what Brendan Howlin stated in 2017, namely:

Reckless endangerment became a criminal offence in this State in 1997 ... Anyone who has had even a cursory look at the reports on Grace would describe her situation as a truly perilous one, a case where she was left in danger due to recklessness.

I urge the Minister to refer all the reports on Grace and Family X to An Garda Síochána and the Director of Public Prosecutions. I call on the Government to pursue the programme of reform of inquiries those of us in Labour have outlined. We know this will happen again. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past if we do not improve the process of inquiries and ensure that people who are impacted can secure truth, accountability and, most importantly, justice. I call on the commission to engage and address the concerns that have been articulated by whistleblowers, families and Grace’s legal team.

See this speech in context