Public servants are able to bully and intimidate with impunity

THERE is a mother in mourning in Ireland. Every day, she cries for the boy she has lost, and there is often no end to the tears.

No end to the pain, to the wondering what she did wrong. Her family suffers with her, the loss of their brother hard to bear.

This mother has given her life to the care and rearing of the boy. His intellectual disabilities were diagnosed as "moderate to severe".

He had no speech and no way of communicating. And when he entered puberty, his emotional difficulties manifested themselves in ways that required full-time effort on the mother's part. It was effort she gladly gave, because she loved the boy.

She never wanted to lose him, of course she didn't. But she needed help.

So she went to her local health service, and asked for respite care. Just something to give her a break, so she and her husband could spend a little time together, maybe get away for a few days.

She was promised respite, but it was never arranged. She, and her family, struggled on, dealing with the boy she loved, who was unable to communicate any love in return.

And she asked again, and this time was told the boy could be accommodated in an adult unit in her view, entirely unsuitable for a 13-year-old already struggling with the onset of puberty.

Puberty is difficult for any young teenager, but most have a degree of discernment, of judgment, of knowing how to deal with the hormonal things that are going on. With intellectual disability, that sometimes becomes more problematic, and puberty needs a lot of extra care and attention.

So time went by, and the family asked again for help. None was forthcoming.

Finally one day they said to their local health service, run by public servants on your behalf and mine, that they must have some respite care immediately, and that there must be some discussion about the boy's long-term future.

The public servants finally acted, and this time with incredible speed.

They took the boy away from his mother. Every day, he would be brought to a special school for part of the day, and one day he simply di dn't come home. Instead, a social worker came to the house, looking for his clothes and anything else his mother thought he might need.

She was bewildered. Had they finally taken him into respite? Was she finally to have a little break? And already she was asking, the day he left, when he would be coming home.

He'll never be coming home. He is now "in care", living in a house with other boys (boys who don't share his intellectual disabilities, but who can't be with their parents for other reasons). He is being well looked after, and his family can visit him when they wish.

But his mother finds that intolerably hard. He can't say if he misses them as much as they miss him, but his face lights up when they arrive. They leave when he is taken for a bath. He loves the water, and it helps him to relax, so he doesn't notice that his family are going.

So his mother hasn't been too often to see him. She can't bear the parting. His father, and his brothers, go regularly.

He is 42 miles away an hour's drive each way, on a good day.

His mother mourns the boy's loss every day. Her grief is total, and it is compounded by the fact that she is a mother with no rights.

Why? How is it possible that a child can be taken from his mother, without warning, without explanation? How can a mother find herself in a situation where she has no recourse, no one to turn to if such a thing happens?

Haven't we a Constitution, a place where the "inalienable and imprescriptible rights" of the family are set out for all to see?

But this mother is a foster mother. She took the boy in almost from birth, not intending to foster him for ever. But when his disabilities were diagnosed, all contact with his natural family ceased, and she decided then to care for him as if he were her own.

Maybe you wouldn't find a decision like that hard to make I know I would. But this mother made that decision, and for the next 11 years she was the best mother that boy could have. Until he was taken away, and she was left inconsolable.

Her crime was that she asked for help. She went to the public servants worn out, and she left them broken.

Because she is a foster mother, because she could have ended the arrangement herself but chose to try to do what was in the best interests of the boy, she has no rights. The public servants owe her no explanation, no apology. They don't even owe her the reassurance that it was never her fault that the boy was taken away.

And because they don't owe it, they haven't bothered. They have left her to suffer alone. And as for the boy? We don't know whether he is suffering, because he can't tell us. But he is a vulnerable boy, torn from the surroundings he knows best, deprived of the warmth of the woman who has always loved him.

This story is true. It didn't happen in Africa, and it didn't happen 40 years ago. It is happening right now, in Ireland.

I won't tell you the name of the boy, because he and his family sorry, his foster family have suffered enough.

Mary Harney, the Tánaiste and Minister for Health, knows the health authority which has chosen to inflict this suffering, because she has been asked to arrange an independent inquiry to be held into its treatment of people.

Does it surprise you, that this is happening in Ireland? Maybe it doesn't. This is the place from which people are casually deported by a minister who can't even remember whether he read the file.

This is the place where a public company advertises for staff who "like dealing with people and get a buzz from knowing that you have made a difference in bringing some joy and happiness into their lives" and then allows Filipina women to be employed at €1 an hour.

This is the country where, it is alleged some farmers are employing non-nationals at slave rates.

This is the place where deportation police have the authority to shout at teachers and take children out of school, no matter what their age. This is the place where public servants, paid to know better and to do better, are able to bully and intimidate people with impunity.

What are we becoming? One of the richest countries in the world or one of the poorest?