State of the nation - Snarling back at critics isn’t good enough

THERE are more than 5,000 children in care in Ireland.

HSE figures from the end of June reveal that the vast majority were in foster care where they were no doubt cherished and well looked after. A further 423 children were in residential care and another 179 are in “other” arrangements.

For such a small population these figures are significant but they should not be taken as being comprehensive. Every juvenile court in the country throws up children already on the slippery slope towards desperate lives of recidivism and exclusion.

Even yesterday a girl of 15, who has been using cocaine, heroin and cannabis, and who has gone missing 25 times this year, was further remanded in custody pending efforts to place her with foster parents.

This sad and unnecessary situation is too often underlined by a distraught parent or frustrated judge declaring that there is no place other than prison to send a young offender. No place that might have a positive impact on a troubled and difficult young person.

Their declarations are not diminished by being unexpected and regular features of our judicial system. That frequency is a barb to sting our smug self-image.

Germany’s Ambassador Christian Pauls is under attack for remarks he made at a function in Dublin last week.

He told his audience that our hospital queues were long. That we have become coarse and addicted to conspicuous consumption. That after a decade of affluence we have an infrastructure that would embarrass any provincial German town.

He also pointed out that 20% of our population are civil servants and that junior ministers earn more than the German chancellor.

The indignation was entirely Pavlovian and immediate. Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern ordered a formal rebuke which was duly delivered by one of the 20%.

Ambassador Pauls did not need to refer to the fact that we await the delivery of UN recommendations regarding services for children to show us in a poor light. He did not point out that we await reform of adoption laws; 24/7 social work services for families and children at risk; detention facilities for children under 18 and mental health services for children and teenagers.

Neither did he refer to the seven-year delays in providing cancer screening services or reform in medical education.

Neither did he refer to Irish and immigrant children without school places, intolerable commuting or child care costs beyond the most spectacular in Europe.

He did not mention that a large section of the population of one of our fastest growing cities has had to boil its drinking water for more than a year. In 2007.

Neither did he mention that the Taoiseach is mired in an inquiry into his Alice in Wonderland finances.

Ambassador Pauls did not ask why the new terminal at Cork Airport, where the paint is barely dry, is already too small — designed to cater for three million passengers a year, 3.2 million will use it in this its first year.

Neither did he refer to the tens of thousands of full-time farmers giving up the struggle of trying to make a living from the land.

Anyone vaguely awake will know that this list could go on and on and fear that highlighting our problems will do little to end them.

Criticism is dismissed by tight-lipped spokesmen as being a “media conspiracy”. The Taoiseach may even give his “naysayers” a snarl through pinched lips but that’s just not good enough anymore.

Can our government, like our rugby coach, simply have run out of ideas and genuine, inspirational and energising ambition? Where is the outrage that anyone in government confronted by these problems should exhibit? Have our government and our civil service become just too comfortable in each other’s company?

Can it be that we face another Dáil where prevarication and delay, deferral and disappointment, smugness and patronising waffle are the order of the day?

Ambassador Pauls will have learned something from his 15 seconds in the Irish limelight. We do not take kindly to criticism no matter how justified and that the messenger is always the first man to be shot.