Incest children should have been in care, Harney admits

Health service staff who worked with children at the centre of the Roscommon incest case should have taken them into care "an awful lot sooner", Health Minister Mary Harney admitted today.

A 40-year-old alcoholic mother was jailed for seven years last week after pleading guilty to a harrowing catalogue of neglect – including forcing her then 13-year-old son to have sex with her.

Fine Gael will table a private members’ motion in the Dáil tomorrow calling for a high-level Commission of Investigation probe into the circumstances surrounding the case.

The HSE has already set up an independent probe to study how social workers interacted with the family which lived in a squalid bungalow strewn with rubbish and dead rats.

Ms Harney said today: “My own hunch, at the outset, not knowing the facts yet, is that if we acted more thoroughly and more robustly and more speedily, these children should have been taken into care an awful lot sooner, an awful lot sooner.”

She added: “It is probably the most horrific case any of us has ever read about.

“That abuse could have gone on for so long. Clearly so many people must have been aware of it and yet nobody seemed to have the capacity to act.”

The woman, who cannot be named to protect her children, was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to 10 charges, including two of incest, two of sexual abuse and six of neglect and wilful ill-treatment and neglect of the children between 1998 and 2004.

She is the first woman in the state to be jailed for incest.

The HSE said Norah Gibbons, director of advocacy at Barnardos, will examine the the interaction of social services with the family at the centre of the incest case.

The inquiry was ordered by Laverne McGuinness, HSE National Director Primary, after the completion of a preliminary review of the case.

The HSE said subject to no unforeseeable impediments, the investigation is expected to be completed within six months, when the final report will be published.

Children’s Minister Barry Andrews said he fully supported the detailed independent investigation.

Speaking ahead of Fine Gael’s calls for a high-level probe, Ms Harney said that people are sometimes quick to jump to conclusions that a full-blown tribunal of inquiry is needed.

“Many such inquiries do not deliver information in a speedy fashion.”

Ms Harney also called called for a change to the 1908 legislation on incest offences.

“It was clearly envisaged at that time that a woman could never possibly be involved in an incest case against her own children.”

She added: “There may well be other areas we need to address from a legislative point of view.”