Who is accountable for not keeping count?

HOW many children have died while in the state’s so-called care in the past decade?

Pick any number between 23 and 200 – and you’ll know exactly as much as the Taoiseach does.

Nearly as shocking as the realisation the Government has no idea how many vulnerable kids have died on its watch in the past 10 years, was Brian Cowen’s inability to convey any sense of moral concern or compassion as he spoke dryly about the need to “validate” the numbers as the issue convulsed the Dáil during Leader’s Questions.

Indeed, the Taoiseach might as well have been discussing the annual tractor production for all the empathetic feeling he brought to the matter.

“The collation and recording of this information is not what one would have expected, but that is the situation,” the Taoiseach observed with the stoniest of understatement.

Enda Kenny’s banging of his desk while expressing anger at the lack of a Government grip on the situation may have been a touch theatrical, but at least it conveyed the sense of national outrage and incredulity that the Taoiseach of the day cannot say whether 20 or 200 youngsters have died while being “cherished” by this Republic over the past decade.

Labour’s Eamon Gilmore raised alarm that if the 200 estimate was correct – and no one in power can disprove it – that means the mortality rate for children in “care” is 12 times that of the wider age group.

Mr Cowen observed he was “not happy” with the situation, before adding that regarding accurate figures for the number of dead teenagers: “One would have hoped it would be available immediately.”

Well, Government is meant to be about a bit more than “hope”, it’s meant to be about leadership – and we have seen precious little of that in the area of child protection.

This is the Government that still has not implemented the 1999 Children’s First guidelines, or the recommendations of the Ryan report, and the administration that only set up a probe into how many youngsters had actually died in its care two months ago – a full year after Fine Gael’s children’s spokesperson Alan Shatter demanded urgency in this area.

And now we have the outrage of one arm of the state, the HSE, refusing to hand over key files to that inquiry about how many children have been fatally let down.

Labour’s Kathleen Lynch made one of the most pointed interventions, demanding the Taoiseach took charge and reminded HSE officials who they worked for and who they were paid by.

The Children’s Minister Barry Andrews was perched behind the Taoiseach, looking gaunt and pensive, either staring downwards or playing nervously with his pen during most of the Leader’s Questions proceedings – sinking back into his enveloping dark blue suit as he did so.

Mr Andrews began badly as Children’s Minister two years ago and has not improved since. Now that the Tánaiste has been demoted from the Trade Department, Mr Andrews is clearly the minister most out of his depth.

The response to the Ryan report was chaotic and embarrassing, the reception of the Murphy inquiry was also ill-judged and his handling of this tragic affair has been little short of awful.

If a Government can’t even keep count of how many youngsters have perished in its care – through murder, suicide and overdose – what can it do?