Grace scandal inquiry to take one year
However, the commission will ignore calls for the cases of at least 46 other vulnerable people placed at the home to be formally included, despite evidence a small number were also physically and sexually abused over a 30-year period.
The Irish Examiner understands the commission’s terms of reference, which will be published just hours after Grace’s birth mother last night described the scandal as “a living hell”, will warn that serious questions remain over what happened at the home which demand further investigation.
Specifically, the terms will raise concerns over alleged cover-ups by HSE and Tusla officials; threats whistleblowers were putting their funding and careers at risk; and whether Michael Noonan’s actions while health minister in the mid-1990s inadvertently led to Grace remaining at the home.
The terms will also include an examination of why repeated opportunities in 1995, 1996, 2001, and 2004, to remove Grace failed to be taken; why a court bid to remove her in 2009 was blocked; why her birth mother was prevented from accessing files for two years; and what concerns were known about the home in 1989/1990.
In addition, they will include a commitment for the commission to publish an interim report into what happened to Grace “no later than” six months after it begins its work, and a final report within one year.
The commission’s work is likely to begin as early as next week after its chair, who is neither a serving or retired judge, is appointed today, allowing for the inquiry to be signed off by the Dáil over the next 48 hours.
However, despite the measures being welcomed by those close to the case last night, the terms are likely to provoke a backlash due to the fact they contain no guarantee other alleged abuses at the same home will be investigated.
While giving the chair authority to recommend further action on the cases of other vulnerable people also placed in the home once the year-long investigation is completed, it is understood the commission will fall short of previous plans for a second module to examine the remaining cases.
Government sources last night defended the decision not to specifically include the remaining 46 people in the investigation as to do so would delay answers over what happened to Grace, and that the chair will still be able to investigate further if it is deemed necessary.
However, they admitted the terms of reference mean it is likely some or all of the remaining cases — including one which was the subject of a joint garda-UK police investigation — may not be examined.
Fianna Fáil TD and former Dáil Public Accounts Committee chair John McGuinness, who played a key role in first highlighting the scandal, last night said the terms all cases must be examined.
“They [Government] are attempting to narrow it. I understand that they don’t want it to go on forever but to get a true sense of the real horror that took place in that house, they need to include the others,” he said.
Meanwhile, the birth mother of Grace last night described what happened to her daughter as “a living hell”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live, the woman rejected the HSE’s written apology to her, and said authorities repeatedly failed to inform her of the abuse her daughter was suffering until 2009. “They never contacted me when there were allegations of sexual abuse, where I needed to give consent for STI testing.”
