Broken system failed Roscommon children, says FG

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.

The party’s spokesperson on children, Alan Shatter, reiterated his call for an independent statutory inquiry into the case.

He said the problem was not with the legislation, but with the systemic failure to implement it.

“The truth is, we have the law necessary. The law necessary to protect the children in Roscommon was there. It’s still there. We have the guidelines necessary to ensure social workers intervene and do their job properly,” Mr Shatter said.

“The problem isn’t that the law’s defective, the problem isn’t that the child guidelines are defective; the problem is that the system is broken and doesn’t work.”

Mr Shatter said there had been a range of reports since the early 1990s documenting what was wrong with child protection services. The problem, he claimed, was that the recommendations in the reports to repair the system had never been implemented.

He cited as an example a report published by the Oireachtas Committee on the Family in April 1996 which examined the case of teenager Kelly Fitzgerald, who died following years of abuse and neglect by her parents.

“I was on the Oireachtas committee that published this report. This report indicted the Western Health Board for its failures to protect Kelly Fitzgerald,” Mr Shatter said.

“At the time that this report was published, with all the recommendations set out in it, this health board was already involved with the Roscommon family. This health board pledged to implement the recommendations contained in this report.

“We’ve had the current government in place for over 12 years, and there are a whole series of recommendations contained in this report that have not been implemented.”

Yet it was actually Fine Gael which was in power when that report was published in 1996. Asked why the Fine Gael-led government of the time had not implemented the recommendations, Mr Shatter insisted: “I’m sure that Fine Gael started to implement them.”