Drumm: Reports on HSE child deaths 'misleading and inaccurate'

The head of the HSE Professor Brendan Drumm has said reports that as many as 200 children have died in the care of the State are misleading and inaccurate.

Professor Drumm said he still stands over the figure of 23 as the number of children who have died in the care of the State in the last 10 years.

An independent group has been set up by the Government to ascertain the number of children who have come in contact with HSE social services in the last 10 years and later died.

The Government has said legislation may be needed to clear the way for the relevant files to be disclosed.

Speaking in Dublin today, Professor Drumm said getting this information is not an easy task.

"That information is not easily available," he said.

"It would be a huge undertaking to go back and get that information over the past 10 years.

"Can that information be collected going forward? Absolutely.

"But we need to be very careful in thinking that you can just push buttons and generate information like that."

Health Minister Harney admitted gathering information on the thousands of children who have passed through the system in the past decade is a "mammoth" task.

Speaking in Dublin this afternoon, Minister Harney however said she wants the figures sooner rather than later.

"What the HSE have been asked to do is examine the numbers of children over the past decade that not only died in care, but where their particular situation was brought to the attention of the HSE," she said. "Some of them could have been within their own families."

"And clearly that is a mammoth task - I think at any one time the HSE is dealing with 5,500 children in care."

"But I want to see that (the gathering and disclosure of information) brought to a conclusion as soon as possible."

Children's Minister Barry Andrews meanwhile said the HSE has to live up to its promise to provide the numbers of those who have died in care by the end of next month.

"Public confidence needs to be restored in this area," Minister Andrews said. "I'm determined that we will have this information by the end of June."