Monageer Report - Tragedy has lessons for each of us

MORE than two years after the dreadful tragedy at Monageer, where Adrian Dunne murdered his wife Ciara and their two children Shania and Leanne before taking his own life, it is difficult to understand or even accept that it could have happened despite all the glaring warning signs.

Local social welfare workers, gardaí, clergy, members the legal profession and the local undertaker all had good reasons to believe that something awful might happen. At the time it was obvious that the stability that anchors most families was absent and that the family was in jeopardy. Some of those aware of this had professional obligations, others had no more than a communal duty of care to a family so obviously in distress.

The same duty of care that binds us all.

Yet, a family plainly living in a world of their own and showing the most alarming signs were not protected from themselves or their dangerous fantasies. How else could a situation where the parents of two relatively healthy young girls approach an undertaker with detailed requests for family funerals?

The undertaker raised the alarm as did local clergy but because the crisis reached its high point at a weekend there were no social welfare staff available. There is provision in legislation for garda intervention if the worst is feared.

However, the determined intervention of the non-professionals is in contrast to the response of the professionals, especially the social welfare service.

The social welfare response, the coldness of the office-closed, call-back-on-Monday, hands washing is alarming.

Each of us has to work outside the allotted hours in times of emergency and this situation was certainly an emergency. Did those involved not feel a vocational obligation? Let us all hope that that cold response is not reflective of the wider social services.

Yesterday’s report said a fundamental problem was the State’s failure to provide and out-of-hours social service response to serious child protection and welfare issues. That may well have been the case but we are unlikely ever to get to a situation were emergency interventions are possible unless individuals go beyond the usual nine-to-five commitment. That is not in any way ideal but it is today’s reality.

The Dunnes were by any standard a tragic family. Adrian was blind and Ciara had to attend a special needs school from fifth class. They had lived at seven addresses in five many years. Neither had ever worked and were dependent on a State income of around €38,000 a year. They had mounting debt and both children were frequent visitors to hospital. Both children had been referred to early intervention teams, one because of delayed development.

It must also be acknowledged too that Mr Dunne did not have an admirable record of transparency in his dealings with the Health Services Executive.

One of the central findings of yesterday’s report is that intervention might not have saved the Dunne family and that, sooner or later, Adrian Dunne might have carried out his deadly plan.

We would like to imagine that there is a solution to every tragedy but the very nature of life teaches us that there is not.

All we can do is try to make sure that each of us does all we can to help our neighbours and friends in their time of need and try to prevent tragedies like the one that occurred Monageer.