Determined to abscond

Gleann Alainn, located on the grounds of a psychiatric hospital in Glanmire just outside Cork city, was deemed to be “in a state of crisis” by HIQA inspectors who found “extremely high-risk behaviour” and a team of people who were not confident or proficient with child protection concerns.

The report, written in December last year, concluded that the young people in care did not receive a “consistently good standard of effective, safe care”.

Since then, another HIQA report noted improvements, but was still critical of the cyclical nature of chaos within the special care system as a whole.