HSE will have list on child deaths this week

THE Health Service Executive has told the Government it will finally have a list of the number of children who died in its care by the end of this week.

It is continuing to work on a wider list of children who died after leaving State care, and said it intends to provide that “as soon as possible”.

The developments come after intense criticism of both the HSE’s and the Government’s handling of the issue.

Amid claims that the Government needed to “get tougher” with the HSE, Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Health Minister Mary Harney, and Children’s Minister Barry Andrews met with a delegation of senior HSE officials at Government Buildings yesterday. Afterwards, a spokesman for Mr Cowen said HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm had pledged to provide some numbers to Government by the end of this week.

“The chief executive stated that the HSE would, by the end of the week, have completed the task of validating the number of children who died in State care since 2000, and such information will be furnished to the independent review group and to the minister,” the spokesman said. “The HSE is also responding to the request for information regarding deaths of children known to the child protection services and persons over the age 18 who had recently been in care and subsequently died.”

The HSE said the latter list would take more time. Although it would endeavour to finish the list “as soon as possible”, it could be the end of June before it is ready.

The HSE said it was differentiating between the children who died while in care and those who died after being in care, to “avoid any confusion”.

“This needs to happen to ensure that there are appropriate parameters in place to ensure accountability and transparency regarding the state’s responsibilities to children.”

Mr Andrews denied that the HSE had been giving “two fingers” to his office on the issue. He said the independent review panel of Norah Gibbons and Geoffrey Shannon were satisfied that some information would be provided to them by the end of the week, with the other information in place by the end of June at the latest.

“I am determined that it will be provided by the end of June and I think public confidence needs to be restored in this area.”

He said the review group “won’t hang around”, if the information is not provided. The Government would therefore push ahead with emergency legislation to get round privacy difficulties which the HSE had claimed was preventing it from furnishing some of the requested information to the review group.

“It is unfortunate we have to go down this road [of new legislation] and, as I have said, it is frustrating, but we are in a new era of transparency,” Mr Andrews said. “Up until 12 months ago, we did not have any national systematic system for reviewing death of children in care.”

Earlier, Prof Drumm said gathering the information for the review group was a “hugely complex” and “hugely sensitive” area and that a mooted figure of 200 deaths in 10 years may not be correct.

He said the number of children who have been identified as having died while in care was 23, in addition to a further three who had left HSE care but were still in contact with care services when they died.

He said the scope of the review had been expanded to involve any child who may have had contact with care service, and getting that information was “a huge undertaking” and not something that can be accessed by “pushing a button”.

“That is a very different question – the only way that question can be answered is by dedicating huge resources to go back over paper files across the system over many, many years,” he said.

Meanwhile, the body of murdered teenager Daniel McAnaspie is still being held by Meath County Coroner, which is awaiting instruction from Garda authorities before releasing the remains to the family.

Five people, including one teenage girl, held in connection with his murder have been released from custody. Files are being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.