The Roscommon abuse case rocked the nation. The social workers who helped get the case to court were in no way prepared for the backlash against them, writes Catherine Shanahan

KEY personnel looking after the children in one of the country’s most disturbing abuse cases felt “vilified” and “crucified” and left hung out to dry by health service management when details of the case emerged.

A 27-YEAR-OLD woman who suffers from cerebral palsy allegedly because of negligence at the time of her birth secured €3 million in a settlement approved by Mr Justice John Quirke in the High Court.

CHILDCARE staff who failed to take six children out of a home where they suffered years of neglect and sexual abuse are only now to be investigated by the HSE after the full horrors of the case were published yesterday.

THE HSE last night apologised “unreservedly and unequivocally” to the six children at the centre of the Roscommon childcare care.

THE family became known to the Western Health Board from 1989.

THE HSE last night admitted that some staff could face sanction over failings in the Roscommon Child Care Case, but stressed changes had been implemented to avoid a repeat case taking place in future.

Health chiefs tonight apologised to six children tortured and sexually abused by their parents in the so-called Roscommon “house of horror” case.

HEALTH Service Executive staff in Galway have been given leave to attend the Galway Races despite reductions in staffing levels and cutbacks in frontline services across the organisation.

THE Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) agrees that the upbringing of children is, in most cases, best left to the parents and that the various family support services should assist, and not supplant, parents in this vital nurturing task.

A FRESH inquiry has been demanded into the abuse of children with intellectual disabilities in institutions run by the Brothers of Charity in Galway.

CONFUSION reigns over the timescale for the publication of the Hynes Report into the abuse of children with intellectual disabilities in institutions run by the Brothers of Charity in Galway.

SUFFICIENT legislation existed to protect the children at the centre of the Roscommon case, but the state failed to use it, Fine Gael has claimed.

Minister for Children Barry Andrews says he still has not received a report from the HSE into the circumstances surrounding the Roscommon incest case.

WE have had to accept that terrible abuse was inflicted on thousands of children by evil and predatory paedophiles so we should not be easily shocked when another horror story kicks its way into our consciousness.

A meningitis warning has been sent to pupils at a school after a 16-year-old classmate died from the disease.

A court has heard that an "extremely anticlerical" social worker investigating alleged sexual abuse at a Galway school was eventually taken off the case by the former Western Health Board.

A Co Galway man, whose wife allegedly sustained serious brain damage around the time of the delivery of her twin girls almost 25 years ago, has settled his legal action for damages against the Western Health Board.

THIRTY years of sexual abuse endured by mentally disabled children at the hands of the Brothers of Charity has been documented for the first time.

The disgraced lecturer, Dr Niall McElwee, who resigned from his post after being charged with sexual offences against three teenage girls, worked part-time in a home for abused and disadvantaged children in Galway.

HEALTH service bosses are facing the prospect of having to staff hundreds of agency workers after the Labour Court ruled their employment on a continuous temporary basis was in breach of national agreements.

A SURVIVOR of the house of horrors in which tragic schoolgirl Kelly Fitzgerald was abused says she has been abandoned by the State since her sister died.

A PROBE ordered by the Health Service Executive at the Mid Western Regional Hospital may have far reaching implications on how its A&E unit interact with other departments to keep patients off trolleys.

A Roscommon man who sexually abused his sister has been given a five year sentence by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court today.

FOR years, activists campaigning for improved cancer services have argued the obvious: patient outcomes are reflected in access to quality treatment.

The Government has finally given approval for the construction of a new €50m community hospital and ambulance base in North Galway, it emerged today.

Four people who attended an industrial school in Galway have complained of suffering sexual abuse, it emerged tonight.

A team of surgeons from a private clinic in England is spending the weekend in Co Tyrone trying to wipe out the waiting list of people in the area needing cataract operations, it was revealed today.

ALCOHOL abuse is leading to the sharp rise in sexually transmitted infections (STI), which are now at their highest-ever recorded level, Health Minister Mary Harney said yesterday.

An elderly hospital patient whose drip had fallen out reportedly had to contact his wife via mobile phone to ask her to get the nurses to put it back in.

The Western Health Board has appealed to the public to stay away from a hospital in Galway city.

A SMALL percentage of fatal road traffic accidents could be disguised suicides, research has indicated.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) today announced that five enforcement orders were served by Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) during the month of August.

THE number of measles cases doubled last year, raising fears of an epidemic.

THE Galway Hospice in-patient unit, which had been closed since May 2003 because of a bitter row over medication procedures, has re-opened.

REGIONS outside greater Dublin are at the early stages of a cocaine epidemic, a health expert warned yesterday.

IT does not surprise me that a report compiled by psychologists at St Michael’s House ‘discovered’ a very worrying degree of sexual abuse of intellectually disabled people (Irish Examiner, July 19).

THE first publican to be prosecuted for breaching the smoking ban must pay fines and costs of €1,700, a court ruled yesterday.

A publican from Galway has become the first in the country to be prosecuted for breaching the smoking ban.

The Southern Health Board has issued formal warnings to two pubs in Cork that are defying the workplace smoking ban.

THE sudden climbdown by the owner of a Galway pub who allowed smoking on his premises in defiance of the law does not lessen the seriousness of the mini-revolt flaring around the country.

The owners of Fibber Magees pub in Galway are to bring a constitutional challenge against the smoking ban, Sky News has reported.