‘How can our protection and caring services fail so miserably?’
These are the words of Bridget Dunne, sister of Adrian Dunne, speaking of the heartache visited on her family and, in particular, her mother, Mary.
A year ago, Mary buried her husband and last month her son, James, hanged himself, so, for her, the latest tragedy represents an unspeakable additional burden to bear.
What appears beyond belief is that a man who, according to his sister, worshipped his “two princesses”, Leanne and Shania, could kille his wife and then suffocate to death his two children.
The real tragedy is that it is not beyond belief at all. We have been here before.
Barely two years ago, two other young children were murdered in Wexford. Sharon Grace drowned her daughters, Abby, three, and Mikhala, four, before taking her own life in April 2005.
On that occasion, the health services were found seriously wanting. Shortly before the deaths, in a desperate plea for help, Sharon took her children to Ely Hospital, just outside Wexford town, looking for a social worker on a Saturday night. She was told by a receptionist one was only available from Monday to Friday, and that no emergency number was available.
The following morning their bodies were spotted in the River Slaney, a short distance from the hospital.
So what has happened in the intervening two years? What systems were put in place to ensure that such an event could not recur? Who among our health and policing services now takes responsibility for vulnerable families? The answers, respectively, are very little, none and nobody knows.
That the system failed a vulnerable woman like Sharon Grace, who was clearly deeply distressed and in need of care, is a national disgrace. That it failed the Dunne family, two years later, given it was the same HSE region is unforgivable.
What more of a warning do our protectors need? A man and his wife walk into a funeral home and make their funeral arrangements.
They picked out the coffins even detailing what clothes their two little girls were going to wear. That information was given to gardaí by the funeral home owner. Surely alarm bells were ringing at this stage.
Instead of sending a team to investigate and, if necessary, call to the Dunne family home, the gardaí delegated that investigative task to local priest Fr Richard Redmond.
While priests certainly have a role to play in caring for their flock, it is outrageous to expect them to do the work of policing or health services.
Once notified that a child is at risk, the HSE and the gardaí are obliged, under the 2001 Childcare Act, to remove minors for their own safety. The HSE can apply for an emergency care order to protect the child and is obliged to be vigilant about ongoing risks that the child faces.
The legislation also obliges gardaí to take action. They have more power. They can raid a home without a warrant and take children to a place of safety if they have reasonable grounds to suspect a risk.
Healthcare officials have said they were unaware of any risks to the family, although they were in contact with them on Friday.
But when a health official was contacted by gardaí on Saturday and told of the cause of their concern again surely alarm bells should have gone off?
The HSE, still operating a Monday to Friday service, placed the onus of responsibility solely on gardaí, advising them to contact the emergency family doctors out-of-hours service, Caredoc, if they had concerns.
In response to the tragedy on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, the HSE’s local health manager for Wexford, Pauline Bryan, said there were no known risks to the family.
She confirmed that the HSE’s child care manager was contacted on Saturday afternoon by gardaí and advised them to take the children to a place of safety such as Wexford General Hospital if they were concerned about their welfare. No social worker from the HSE visited the Dunne family over the weekend.
The garda response was equally lamentable. While a garda car drove past the Dunne family home a number of times, no officer bothered to call in.
How can our protection and caring services fail so miserably? That is what is truly beyond belief.
