Cases ‘had little to do with child protection’

Recent events surrounding Garda involvement in two cases of children who were taken on the basis of conjecture from their homes into care, are reminiscent of the darkest days of European history.

These cases have very little to do with child protection but stick odiously to tenets of ignorance and xenophobia.

There has been no compliance by the HSE and the Garda to the legal framework in place for genuine child protection cases and a full investigation must be conducted into how it came to be that two children were arbitrarily taken into care.

Beyond any policy or intellectual considerations, on the most basic level it conflates so many insidious elements in society — an ironic melting pot that incorporates the criminalisation of foreign nationals and pseudo-eugenics to form a wholly objectionable outcome.

The rationale of the individuals who reported these parents was presumably reached through the prism of the Greece case — although I am hasten to even name it ‘rationale’.

I am reluctant on most occasions to emphasise punitive over restorative measures, but I sincerely hope that there are repercussions for such individuals for wasting State resources and that these people also consider what it might be like for someone to take their child into care on the basis of flimsy suppositions such as eye colour.

Sarah Byrne

Carrigaline

Co Cork