HSE delays publishing reports on care deaths

THE HSE was criticised yesterday for the late postponing of the publication of two reports into the deaths of two young people in care over what it called “unresolved legal issues”.

The media was notified before noon yesterday that the reports would be published at 3pm, but less than an hour before the reports were due to be published, the HSE said the press conference would not be going ahead.

In a statement released yesterday evening the HSE said: “While it was our intention to publish reports into the deaths of two children in care today, a number of legal issues remain outstanding and a publication date will now be set for the coming weeks once these matters have been resolved.”

Fine Gael’s children’s spokesman Alan Shatter TD, who last month published details of the death of 18-year-old Tracey Fay in 2000, said the HSE action was “truly bizarre” and cast doubt on its credibility when it came to the eventual publication of any report into the death of a child in care.

He said he assumed the two reports the HSE intended to publish were into the case of David Foley, a 17-year-old who died of a drug overdose in Dublin in 2005, and the official report into the death of Tracey Fay, details of which Fine Gael have already published.

As reported in yesterday’s Irish Examiner, it is understood that the reports fall short of new standards into child death investigation launched by the Health Quality Information Authority (HIQA) last month. It is understood there may also have been issues with the Office of the Minister for Children over the adequacy of the information contained in the reports and how much detail should be put into the public domain.

Mr Shatter said Minister for Children Barry Andrews and the HSE had been in possession of the reports for more than a year without making the findings known.

“It is very difficult to understand what last minute legal issue could have arisen that would have prevented both of those reports being published, when they were originally supposed to be published in October 2009,” he said.

Mr Shatter said the non-appearance of the reports showed the HSE was “incapable of adopting a coherent approach to providing a transparent and accountable childcare and child protection service” and that abbreviated or redacted reports contributed to “the institutionalised cover-up of systematic failures”.

The Children’s Rights Alliance (CRA), said the reports were “long overdue”.

CRA chief executive Jillian Van Turnhout said: “We need to learn about the individual cases but we also need to learn about the systems. We need to know where things went wrong and what corrective action has been taken.”

“This could make a difference to children who are in the system now.”

Last month Mr Andrews established a child death review group, but admitted that the number of child deaths between 2000 and 2010 could be more than the 23 he mentioned in a Dáil debate on the issue.

The Irish Examiner understands that considerably more deaths may actually require independent review, possibly as many as 40 or more.

Two people have been appointed to the review group, but a third, international expert has yet to be appointed to the panel.