‘Grace’ officials urged to stand aside

Senior officials in the HSE and State Child and Family Agency Tusla linked to the ‘Grace’ foster abuse scandal should temporarily step down pending the outcome of the imminent State inquiry into the controversy, it has been claimed.

Two politicians central to uncovering the scandal and the whistleblower who first flagged concerns last night demanded the action, after a detailed report into the case was finally published after months of delays.

The report, by senior counsel Conor Dignam, was commissioned 16 months ago due to deeply concerning claims that a girl with severe mental disabilities was subjected to serious sexual abuse between 1989 and 2009 and that the HSE repeatedly failed to remove her from the foster home, with further allegations that the case was covered up.

Minister of State at the Department of Health Finian McGrath said he expected the terms of reference for the commission of investigation to be before Cabinet within weeks.

The report includes a series of highly critical findings of how the HSE handled the case. They include:

• Two still unpublished HSE reports, by Resilience Ireland and Conor Devine Associates, were “inadequate in all circumstances” due to the scope allowed by the HSE and meant “serious issues were not investigated as soon as possible”;
• These unaddressed issues involve “allegations of a cover-up, the alleged danger of a deliberate destruction of files”, and “an alleged threat to the funding” to the whistleblower’s agency, claims which remain disputed;
• The failure to ensure the issues were addressed speedily meant the families of 40 other vulnerable children and teenagers also placed at the home saw an “urgent” examination of their cases delayed “almost four years”;
• That while the HSE declined to publish the Resilience Ireland and Conor Devine Associates reports due to ongoing Garda criminal inquiry, there is “no civil law bar to publication”.

In addition to the findings, Mr Dignam’s report has also called for a series of issues to be addressed by a now-imminent State inquiry into the case, which was promised by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

In particular, the report states any investigation must clarify whether there was “any deliberate suppression or attempted suppression of information” by HSE officials with a “particular reference” to the seven years since ‘Grace’ left the home in 2009.

Mr Dignam has also called for a full explanation of who first decided the foster family was fit to take in people, whether the family was monitored at any stage, and why the HSE initially planned to remove Grace in 1995 alongside other placements but failed to do so.

Among more than 30 terms of reference recommendations, Mr Dignam has also said the inquiry should clarify whether the foster family father’s representations to the Department of Health and the then minister for health Michael Noonan in 1996 forced the U-turn on Grace’s removal, prolonging her ordeal.

In a statement last night, the HSE apologised and said that it has acted to address “deficiencies” in services, adding Mr Dignam’s recommendations are “appropriate” for a state inquiry.

However, Fine Gael TD John Deasy and Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness — who were central to highlighting the case in the last Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee — said this does not go far enough and that senior HSE and Tusla officials involved in the case should step aside pending the outcome of the inquiry.

“They should be asked to step aside while the investigation is ongoing,” Mr McGuinness said.

The whistleblower who first raised the concerns surrounding Grace, who cannot be named due to strict protected disclosure rules, repeated the view when contacted by the Irish Examiner last night, saying “anybody involved should certainly step aside”.